Doing right by Eric Garner

Three years Eric Garner has been gone, his life ended on a Staten Island sidewalk by force of an NYPD officer’s arm around his neck, the death clutch seen by millions in footage made public by the Daily News. Three years Daniel Pantaleo has remained on the NYPD payroll, racking up more than $40,000 in overtime while on desk duty and awaiting any consequence for his life-ending action.

Three years too long, for the police killing that accelerated the in-the-streets outrage of the Black Lives Matter movement and an NYPD reckoning with use of force writ large.

Repercussions for Pantaleo now loom larger with the finding by the independent Civilian Complaint Review Board that he indeed used a forbidden chokehold on Garner.

The CCRB further concludes that Pantaleo’s chokehold restricted Garner’s breathing — and recommends that the NYPD bring Pantaleo up on the strongest possible disciplinary charges, with termination a possible consequence.

The CCRB or NYPD ought to have started such disciplinary proceedings ages ago. But an absurdly dragged-out civil rights investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, run into a ditch last year in a stand-off between prosecutors over whether to bring charges, interferes with the justice due.

New York’s authorities must wait, and wait, lest they curb Pantaleo’s own civil right against self-incrimination should he face federal indictment. Enough is enough is enough. The federal investigation and grand jury review must swiftly and cleanly conclude. If Attorney General Jeff Sessions declines to press charges against Pantaleo, it will immediately fall to Police Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill to decide whether to conduct an internal NYPD trial or allow the CCRB to proceed with an action.

The commish had better have made up his mind after all this time, weighing the value of the credibility an independent trial would bring versus the control he would have in bringing charges.

Either way, get justice done for Garner.