NYPD fires cop in Garner death case

Chokehold of Black man, who was unarmed, led to debate over use of force

After five years of investigations and protests, the New York City Police Department on Monday fired an officer involved in the 2014 chokehold death of the Black man whose dying cries of “I can’t breathe” fuelled a debate over race and police use of force.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said he fired Daniel Pantaleo, who is white, based on a recent recommendation of a department disciplinary judge. He said it was clear Pantaleo “can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer.”

“None of us can take back our decisions,” O’Neill said, “especially when they lead to the death of another human being.”

Asked whether Mayor Bill de Blasio forced his hand, O’Neill said the dismissal was his choice. “This is the decision that the police commissioner makes,” he said, calling Eric Garner’s death an “irreversible tragedy” that “must have a consequence.”

The police union president, Patrick Lynch, accused O’Neill of choosing “politics and his own self-interest over the police officers he claims to lead.”

Lynch urged police officers to “proceed with the utmost caution in this new reality, in which they may be deemed ‘reckless’ just for doing their job.”

Video of the confrontation led to years of protests and calls by Black activists and liberal politicians for Pantaleo to lose his job. City officials had long insisted they could not take action until criminal investigations were complete.

A state grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo in 2014. Federal authorities, however, kept a civil rights investigation open for five years before announcing last month they would not bring charges.

Garner’s death came at a time of a growing public outcry over police killings of unarmed Black men that sparked the Black Lives Matter movement.