DO YOUR JOB!
NYPD shelves Pantaleo after judge urges that ‘reckless’ officer be axed
Choke cop suspended; fate in O’Neill’s hands
NYPD judge sez fire ‘reckless’ Pantaleo
The family of NYPD chokehold victim Eric Garner still can’t breathe easy.
The mother and daughter of the Staten Island man whose death sparked outrage across the city and around the country demanded the firing of Officer Daniel Pantaleo after a departmental judge called Friday for his dismissal — an explosive ruling that brings the polarizing fiveyear legal drama closer to its conclusion.
“I think I’m feeling the same way our entire family is feeling, which is it’s been too long,” said the dead man’s emotional daughter, Emerald Snipes-Garner, after the NYPD suspended Pantaleo following the judge’s decision. “Commissioner O’Neill, do your job. We’ve been waiting for five years, and we don’t want to wait no more.”
Garner’s mother Gwen Carr acknowledged that the ruling by NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemary Maldonado provided some long-needed relief for the family, and urged the NYPD and the city to quickly terminate the 13-year veteran. Pantaleo has remained on duty and on the NYPD payroll since July 17, 2014, despite repeated calls for his firing.
“New Yorkers deserve to know that police who kill our children and those who try to cover it up will be fired by the NYPD, so they don’t get paid with our taxpayer dollars to (pose) a danger to us,” said Carr. “He should be fired without a pension, benefits or a ‘good guy’ letter.”
Final word on the termination rests in the hands of Police Commissioner James O’Neill, who remained silent amid the Friday tumult. NYPD insiders expect O’Neill to fire Pantaleo, assigned to a desk job minus his gun and shield since Garner’s death.
Garner’s dying declaration of “I can’t breathe,” repeated 11 times, galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. The death was captured on smartphone video that was first uncovered by the Daily News before going viral.
An infuriated Police Benevolent Association head Patrick Lynch went ballistic over the decision, charging the city’s 36,000 officers no longer have the support of City Hall.
“Today is one of the saddest and most damaging days in the history of New York City and the New York City Police Department,” Lynch declared at the union’s lower Manhattan headquarters. “The decision that went down today, saying that police officer was reckless, is ludicrous.”
Mayor de Blasio, at a City Hall news conference interrupted by activists shouting for Pantaleo’s firing, expressed his hope the Garner family might finally experience closure from a wound left open by the legal system’s inability to bring any criminal charges.
“They were told over and over and over again that the government would do its job,” the mayor said. “And they waited and waited and waited and nothing happened. And as all this stretched on, there was the suspicion felt by millions that justice doesn’t exist for people who look like Eric Garner.”
As the mayor spoke, the protesters burst into the Blue
Room yelling “Fire Pantaleo! Fire Pantaleo!”
The Staten Island cop and the Civilian Complaint Review Board each have 10 business days to review the judge’s recommendation and respond before the file goes to O’Neill for final disposition. The CCRB quickly urged the commissioner to “uphold this verdict and dismiss Pantaleo.”
Pantaleo was cleared in 2014 by a Staten Island grand jury in Garner’s death on Bay St., and federal prosecutors opted last month to pass on civil rights charges against the cop. Both decisions infuriated the dead man’s family, and were greeted with anger and widespread demonstrations.
In her recommendation, Maldonado found Pantaleo guilty of one of the two charges against him — recklessly using a chokehold banned by the NYPD. She cleared him of the second charge, intentionally restricting Garner’s breathing. Pantaleo testified before the grand jury that he used a department-approved seatbelt takedown maneuver on Garner.
The Rev. Al Sharpton, a supporter of the Garner clan since day one, said the fight is far from over.
“Make no mistake about it, this is not justice for the Garner family,” said Sharpton. “The commissioner needs to immediately, unequivocally accept the recommendation of the judge and remove him right away. The city should not have in its employ someone that would choke someone to death in violation of police guidelines.
“Someone that hears someone say 11 times ‘I can’t breathe.’ ”
Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stu London, argued at the department trial that Garner’s poor health played a role in the death. Garner weighed 390 pounds and suffered from diabetes, hypertension and cardiovascular problems. But the city medical examiner’s office said it was a chokehold that set in motion a “lethal cascade” of events that ended in a fatal asthma attack.
Pantaleo stands to lose his pension if he’s fired, keeping only the money he contributed to the fund. If he decides to resign before O’Neill’s decision, he forfeits the right to sue to get his job back.