TIME TO ACT
Garner ma to NYPD: Charge choke cop now
SHE CAN’T wait.
Eric Garner’s grieving mom met with the watchdog group that probes police misconduct Monday and called on city officials to stop taking a backseat to the Department of Justice when it comes to the officer who used a banned chokehold that led to her son’s death three years ago.
Gwen Carr lauded the Civilian Complaint Review Board for recently recommending the most severe departmental charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo. But she said it means nothing if the NYPD and Mayor de Blasio fail to act in deference to a seemingly stalled federal investigation.
“I thought I would have gotten justice a long time ago. But as of now, they’re still stringing us along. So that’s why we are asking, we are begging, the mayor to please go forward with this, and the Police Department,” she said.
“I feel no matter who the President is or who the attorney general is, we still live in America, and we still should get justice,” she said.
Carr expressed outrage that Pantaleo continues to work his lucrative desk job with the NYPD while federal officials seem to be dragging their feet.
“He’s getting rewarded for killing my son, is what I feel,” she said.
As the Daily News previously reported, Pantaleo pocketed around $40,000 in overtime pay during the first two years of his modified desk duty gig — even though he was stripped of his gun and badge.
It was earlier this month that the CCRB issued its long-awaited decision on Garner’s death.
The board found Pantaleo’s forbidden maneuver did indeed restrict Garner’s breathing and that the NYPD should impose its stiffest possible departmental charges — which could lead to termination.
Pantaleo used the chokehold when he and other cops arrested Garner in July 2014 for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes.
Garner, 43, helplessly gasped, “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” as he was restrained on a Staten Island sidewalk and died.
Millions witnessed the fatal grip in footage made public by The News. Garner’s desperate last words became a powerful refrain for the Black Lives Matter movement and demonstrations focused on police killings of unarmed black men. After the CCRB decision, activists called on the Department of Justice to complete its investigation and charge Pantaleo with violating Garner’s civil rights. NYPD officials have said they’re in a holding pattern while a potential of a federal indictment looms, because Pantaleo has due-process rights that restrict their ability to question him. Kirsten John Foy of the National Action Network joined Carr at the CCRB meeting Monday and agreed the city should stop deferring to federal authorities and “fight” for accountability in the Garner case.
“This mayor, Mayor de Blasio, has not been shy in pushing back against the Trump administration agenda as it relates to immigration, as it relates to housing. . . . For him to be in lockstep with Jeff Sessions over Eric Garner flies in the face of everything voters (who) voted for him believed that he would do,” Foy said.
Attempts to reach a City Hall spokesman were not immediately successful Monday.
In an email, an NYPD spokesman said, “The NYPD has been in regular contact with the Department of Justice about when the NYPD can proceed with administrative disciplinary proceedings without prejudicing DOJ’s ongoing investigation. The NYPD and DOJ continue to discuss that matter, but for now the NYPD continues to honor DOJ’s request not to proceed with internal disciplinary proceedings at this time.”