3 years after police chokehold death, US probe grinds on
NEW YORK (AP) — When federal prosecutors asked to meet last month with Eric Garner’s family, it stoked speculation that their investigation into his death was finally nearing a resolution three years after his last words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry for protests over police killings of black men.
The speculation was wrong: The same day of the Brooklyn meeting, a grand jury heard testimony from a police academy instructor on takedown tactics, dragging out a presentation that began last year, said two people familiar with the secret panel’s work. Department of Justice prosecutors have privately told both the frustrated Garner family and police union attorneys that any decision about whether to charge the officer who killed Garner is months away, according to the people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the case and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
“Three years later,” one of Garner’s daughters, Erica, tweeted Monday on the anniversary of her father’s death. “I have no ... idea what else to do. I really don’t. I have turned over every stone.”
The fits and starts of the Garner investigation stands out from other federal civil rights investigations into police shootings of black men.
The Justice Department probe of the death Alton Sterling, who was shot by Baton Rouge police while pinned to the ground in July 2016, was wrapped up in 10 months when prosecutors concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to bring charges.
The department’s probe of the 2014 police shooting of unarmed teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, ended the same way in March 2015.
It took less than a year for a federal indictment of an officer who pleaded guilty in the 2015 slaying of Walter Scott in South Carolina.
There’s no time limit for civil rights investigations, but the length of the Garner inquiry is unusual, said Jonathan Smith, a former Justice Department prosecutor. Internal politics or concerns for optics could be stalling an announcement, he added.
“It’s not like there’s a lot of (unknown) facts in this case. It was on videotape,” he said. “What can be known is going to be known at this point.”
The widely watched video from July 17, 2014, shows Garner, who had been stopped by officers for selling untaxed cigarettes, telling the officers to leave him alone and refusing to be handcuffed. Officer Daniel Pantaleo responds by putting Garner in an apparent chokehold — banned under New York Police Department policy — as he was taken to the ground.
The heavyset Garner, who had asthma, is heard gasping, “I can’t breathe” before lapsing into unconsciousness. He later was pronounced dead at a hospital. The medical examiner ruled Garner’s death a homicide caused in part by the chokehold. But police union officials and Pantaleo’s lawyer have argued that the officer used a takedown move taught by the police department, not a chokehold, and that Garner’s poor health was the main reason he died.
The U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn took up the case in 2015 after a state grand jury declined to bring charges against Pantaleo.
When the local office concluded there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the officer deliberately violated Garner’s civil rights, the Justice Department — then led by Attorney General Loretta Lynch — assigned prosecutors from Washington to take over and forge ahead.