The Right Call on Pantaleo

Tuesday’s announcement that Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo won’t face federal civil-rights charges in the death of Eric Garner was no real surprise to anyone who’d followed the news these last five years. Nor, for all the activists’ outrage, did Attorney General William Barr make the wrong call.

The Justice Department could, and should, have reached this decision years ago: Prosecutors have repeatedly failed to find evidence that Pantaleo intended to kill Garner or even willfully used unnecessary force. (DC-based ideologues at Justice’s Civil Rights Division still wanted to bring charges, but President Barack Obama’s top appointees didn’t buy it.)

Garner’s death remains not just a tragedy, but wrongful: The city admitted that when it agreed to pay his survivors $5.9 million. But the fault includes the other cops and EMTs

on the scene, who all failed to act as Garner died — as well as his own decision to resist arrest, which began the escalation.

No one meant for this horror to happen, and the NYPD continues to refine its training and tactics to try to avoid such deaths. New York cops’ use of force is the lowest of any major urban force, even as they keep bringing crime down.

A judge may yet find that Pantaleo didn’t act properly as a police officer, and Commissioner James O’Neill will almost certainly fire him, as will be right and proper: That day ended his value as an active-duty officer, even if union protections have let him work at a desk in the interim.

Anyone who’s ever senselessly lost a loved one will understand why many don’t think those consequences are enough, but criminal liability for Pantaleo has looked like overreach almost from the start.