Garner decision near Feds to speak of case a day before cop-charge deadline
Justice Department officials are expected to announce Tuesday or Wednesday whether they’ll charge NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner on Staten Island five years ago.
Federal prosecutors must decide by Wednesday — the fifth anniversary of the incident — whether they will bring a criminal case.
Garner’s family and the Rev. Al Sharpton are expected to meet federal prosecutors in Brooklyn at 10 a.m. Tuesday. Richard Donoghue, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, has scheduled a press conference for 11 a.m.
“We have no idea what’s going to happen,” Sharpton told the Daily News. “We have been asked to be there at 10 a.m. and hear what they have to say.”
Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stuart London, also said they have no knowledge of what will happen.
“It’ll be an interesting day tomorrow, and, hopefully, we’ll be able to put a big piece of this behind us,” London said Monday.
The feds told the NYPD a year ago that they had completed their investigation into the circumstances surrounding the July 17, 2014, confrontation on Staten Island in which Garner was killed. Garner gasped “I can’t breathe!” 11 times as Pantaleo took him to the ground with what authorities have described as a banned chokehold.
The NYPD, meanwhile, could fire Pantaleo, who did not testify at his recently completed departmental trial. But before any administrative action can be taken against the officer, NYPD Deputy Trials Commissioner Rosemarie Maldonado has to issue her recommendation to Police Commissioner James O’Neill. T p pp until after the feds announce the results of their probe.
Neither the NYPD nor the Justice Department responded Monday to questions about the case. Sources said police officers have been told that unless they have prescheduled vacations, they can’t take Wednesday or Thursday off.
London stressed again that Pantaleo, who has been working on modified assignment with no gun or shield since the incident, wants to remain on the force.
“He is apprehensive, but autiously optimistic,” London aid. “It’s such a politically harged case. I think he undertands the optics here, but he wants to remain a police offier forever.”
Garner was confronted by Pantaleo and other officers for llegedly selling loose, untaxed igarettes, a persistent qualityf-life issue on Bay St. in Tompkinsville. Garner, who had a history of such offenses nd had cigarettes on him that day, said all he had done was break up a fight and that he was no longer going to tolerate being hassled by police.
As he was taken down, the 395-pound Garner suffered a fatal asthma attack triggered by Pantaleo’s chokehold and the compression of Garner’s chest when he was on the ground, the city medical examiner’s office said.
London has said Pantaleo used a sanctioned “seat-belt” maneuver, not a chokehold, and that Garner died because he was in poor health.
Sharpton said his gut tells him there’s a 50-50 chance Pantaleo is charged.
“In that same building we saw the Abner Louima trial happen and a cop go to jail,” he said. “And now (with Garner) we have more to work with. We didn’t have police on tape in the Louima case. And isn’t the city better now than it was more than 20 years ago?”
Failing to federally charge Pantaleo, he said, would be “a loss for the city.”
If the feds don’t prosecute, Sharpton said he and Garner’s family will focus on getting Pantaleo fired.
“We will continue to pursue the department and demand that they take his job. We can’t have a cop working in this city who puts a man in a chokehold on tape, and the man says ‘I can’t breathe’ 11 times. We want the department to fire him most expeditiously,” Sharpton said.