On July 17, 2014, two New York Police Department officers confront Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American father of six, for illegally selling cigarettes. Garner dies after losing consciousness as a police officer locks him in an illegal chokehold, and within hours, a video of the incident begins to spark outrage across the country.
Garner was known as a "neighborhood peacemaker" in his Staten Island community, and was also well-known to the police for selling cigarettes illegally near the ferry terminal on Staten Island.
Officers Daniel Pantaleo and Justin D'Amico, called to the scene because of a fight that Garner reportedly broke up, exchanged words with Garner about his cigarettes before Pantaleo reached around Garner's neck and put him in a chokehold, despite such a maneuver being against NYPD rules.
Pinned to the ground by the officers, Garner repeatedly told them, "I can't breathe." Eventually, he lost consciousness. He was pronounced dead at a hospital roughly an hour later, and the medical examiner ruled his death a homicide by suffocation.
Footage of the incident quickly went viral. There were protests in the days following Garner's death, but it was a grand jury's decision not to indict Pantaleo on December 3 that sparked large demonstrations in New York City and elsewhere across the country.
Garner's last words, "I can't breathe," became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement. The police officer whose chokehold led to Garner’s death in 2014 was fired from the Police Department in 2019 and stripped of his pension benefits.
The following year, when New York State repealed its ban on publicizing police disciplinary records, it was revealed that Pantaleo had been investigated for misconduct seven times in the five years before Garner's death (Editors 1-2).
Now, more detailed information.
On July 17, 2014, at approximately 3:30 p.m., Garner was approached by a plainclothes police officer, Justin D'Amico, in front of a beauty supply store at 202 Bay Street in Tompinsville, Staten Island. According to bystanders (including a friend of Garner, Ramsey Orta, who recorded the incident on his cell phone) Garner had just broken up a fight, which may have drawn the attention of the police. Officers confronted Garner and accused him of selling "loosers" (single cigarettes without a tax stamp) in violation of New York state law. Garner is heard on the video saying the following:
Get away [garbled] for what? Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it. It stops today. Why would you...? Everyone standing here will tell you I didn't do nothing. I did not sell nothing. Because every time you see me, you want to harass me. You want to stop me [garbled] selling cigarettes. I'm minding my business, officer, I'm minding my business. Please just leave me alone. I told you the last time, please just leave me alone.
When Pantaleo approached Garner from behind and attempted to handcuff him, Garner pulled his arms away, saying, "Don't touch me, please." Pantaleo then placed his arm around Garner's neck and pulled him backward in an attempt to bring him to the ground; in the process, Pantaleo and Garner slammed into a glass window, which did not break. Garner went to his knees and forearms and did not say anything for a few seconds. At that point, three uniformed officers and the two plainclothes officers had surrounded him. After 15 seconds, the video shows Pantaleo removing his arm from around Garner's neck; Pantaleo then used his hands to push Garner's face into the sidewalk. Garner is heard saying "I can't breathe" eleven times while lying face down on the sidewalk. The arrest was supervised by a female African-American NYPD sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, who did not intercede. Adonis was quoted in the original police report as stating, "The perpetrator's condition did not seem serious and he did not appear to get worse."
A police sergeant called an ambulance and indicated that Mr. Garner was having trouble breathing, but reportedly added that he "did not appear to be in great distress". Garner lay motionless, handcuffed, and unresponsive for several minutes before an ambulance arrived, as shown in a second video. After Garner lost consciousness, officers turned him onto his side to ease his breathing. Garner remained lying on the sidewalk for seven minutes. When an ambulance arrived, two medics and two EMTs inside the ambulance did not place Garner on oxygen, administer any emergency medical aid or promptly place him on a stretcher. According to police, Garner had a heart attack while being transported to Richmond University Medical Center. He was pronounced dead at the hospital one hour later (Killing 3).
The officer's lawyer contends his client used approved tactics to arrest Garner, but earlier this month NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado ruled that Mr Pantaleo had used a chokehold - which is banned by the police department.
As the officers continued to restrain Garner, the asthmatic was heard repeatedly saying: "I can't breathe."
Mr O'Neill said Mr Pantaleo's decision to maintain the chokehold on the ground is what led to his firing.
The 43-year-old father of six, who weighed more than 350lb (160kg), appeared to lose consciousness and later was pronounced dead in the hospital.
A city medical examiner ruled the chokehold contributed to Garner's death.
In 2015, the city of New York reached a settlement with the family for $5.9m (£4.8m) after they brought a wrongful-death lawsuit arguing that Garner was not given sufficient medical aid by emergency officials.
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The president of the police union, Patrick Lynch, pilloried NYPD as "rudderless and frozen".
"The leadership has abandoned and left our police officers on the street without backing," said Mr Lynch (BBC 1).
Federal prosecutors will not charge the New York police officer implicated in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, an African American man killed almost five years ago.
The decision announced by the US attorney Richard Donoghue on Tuesday was another blow to the Garner family, figureheads in the Black Lives Matter movement, who have campaigned to hold the NYPD accountable. US justice department sources said the final call on the non-indictment was made by the attorney general, William Barr.
Garner’s death, on 17 July 2014, became a focal point for national conversation on race and policing. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe”, were chanted by protesters across the US.
On Tuesday, Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, said: “Five years ago my son said ‘I can’t breathe’ 11 times. Today we can’t breathe because they [the federal government] have let us down.”
The arrest was captured on cellphone video which showed Garner repeating the phrase 11 times as Officer Daniel Pantaleo pulled him to the ground in what has been described as a banned chokehold.
The incident was ruled a homicide by the investigating medical examiner but in December 2014 a grand jury in Staten Island declined to charge Pantaleo in a separate case investigated by local prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors have long been considering whether to bring civil rights charges against Pantaleo in a case that has spanned the Obama and Trump administrations and four attorneys general. The decision comes a day before the statute of limitations was due to expire.
Reports indicated that civil rights prosecutors recommended bringing a case against Pantaleo in 2018 but were blocked by senior justice department officials. Those reports came under Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, amid a reversal of an Obama-era push to hold police accountable for excessive force and racially biased policing.
Donoghue, US attorney for the eastern district of New York, made the highly unusual move of announcing the decision and providing details of the underlying reasoning.
At a news conference in Brooklyn, he told reporters there was “insufficient evidence” to meet the high bar of a federal civil rights prosecution.
…
To charge Pantaleo under federal statute, prosecutors would have had to prove not only that he had used objectively unreasonable force but also that he had wilfully violated the law. Donoghue said that while his department had interviewed in excess of four dozen witnesses, the video of Garner’s death provided the central evidence.
He said prosecutors believed the video showed that Pantaleo attempted to perform two approved restraints on Garner before he placed Garner in “what appeared to be a chokehold” for seven seconds as the two fell to the floor.
Pivotally, Donogue said: “Officer Pantaleo was not engaged in a chokehold on Mr Garner when he said he can’t breathe.”
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New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, issued a statement shortly before the decision was formally announced. “Years ago, we put our faith in the federal government to act,” he said. “We won’t make that mistake again.”
The decision not to indict Pantaleo means the Garner family’s only recourse is now a secretive internal investigation into the death, which only began last year as the De Blasio administration waited for news from federal prosecutors.
The administrative trial was concluded last month. A number of witnesses to the incident, the medical examiner and senior NYPD officers testified against Pantaleo.
Pantaleo has remained employed since Garner’s death, working desk duty and earning a salary of more than $100,000.
Speaking to the Guardian during Pantaleo’s administrative trial, Garner’s mother Gwen Carr expressed exasperation.
“There is no justice at all for Eric,” she said. “The harshest punishment is firing. They murdered him and if there was going to be justice, it would have been at the point when he said ‘I can’t breathe’” (Laughland 1-2).
The history of allegations made against Pantaleo was released Friday by New York City's Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an independent oversight agency that reviews complaints against police officers. Seventeen complaints against Pantaleo were filed with the agency from 2009 to 2014, the year Garner was killed. They resulted in eight cases being opened against Pantaleo, which included the case involving Garner's death. …
One case that the CCRB substantiated was from an incident in 2011 where Pantaleo allegedly abused his power when conducting a vehicle stop and search. It resulted in Pantaleo receiving "instructions" as a penalty, according to the disciplinary record.
Another substantiated case against Pantaleo from 2012 alleged that he abused his power when stopping and searching a person. That case resulted in a departmental disciplinary trial where Pantaleo was found guilty and was penalized by having to forfeit two vacation days, according to the disciplinary record (Moghe 2).
A state appeals court on Thursday upheld the New York Police Department’s decision to fire an officer for the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner.
A five-judge panel of the state Supreme Court’s Appellate Division ruled that there was substantial evidence showing that Daniel Pantaleo acted recklessly and that firing him was an appropriate outcome.
Pantaleo went to court seeking to be reinstated after then-police commissioner James O’Neill fired him in August 2019 following a department disciplinary trial. His lawyer argued that termination was an excessive punishment and that was “shocking to one’s sense of fairness.”
The appellate panel rejected that, writing that there was “substantial evidence” to support the conclusion that Pantaleo “recklessly caused injury to Eric Garner by maintaining a prohibited chokehold for 9 to 10 seconds after exigent circumstances were no longer present, thereby disregarding the risk of injury.”
The head of the city’s police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review board, commended the appeals court for upholding Pantaleo’s firing.
“Daniel Pantaleo should never be able to patrol New York City streets again, and now New Yorkers can rest assured that he won’t,” CCRB chairperson Fred Davie said.
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A grand jury declined to bring criminal charges against Pantaleo and the NYPD held off on starting its internal disciplinary process for several years, with officials saying they did not want to interfere with a federal civil rights investigation that ultimately yielded no charges (Sisak 1).
[Click the following to see the video of Eric Garner’s arrest]
Works cited:
BBC. Eric Garner: NY officer in 'I Can't Breathe' Death Fired.” BBC News, August 19, 2019. Net. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49399302
History.com Editors. “Eric Garner Dies in NYPD Chokehold.” A&E Television Networks, July 15, 2020. Net. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/eric-garner-dies-nypd-chokehold
“Killing of Eric Garner.” Wikipedia. Net. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Eric_Garner#Ramsey_Orta
Laughland, Oliver. “Eric Garner: No Charges against White Police Officer over Chokehold Death.” The Guardian, July 16, 2019. Net. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jul/16/eric-garner-death-new-york-no-charges
Moghe, Sonia. “Disciplinary Record of Ex-Officer Who Held Eric Garner in Chokehold Is Finally Released.” CNN, June 23, 2020. Net. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/us/eric-garner-officer-misconduct-complaints/index.html
Sisak, Michael R. “Court Upholds Firing of NYPD Officer in Eric Garner’s Death.” AP News, March 25, 2021. Net. https://apnews.com/article/new-york-daniel-pantaleo-police-eric-garner-death-of-eric-garner-bb78cadfa26563cc8c0e22f0d20361b4
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