NYC officer in ‘I can’t breathe’ death won’t be charged

New York — Federal prosecutors said Tuesday that they won’t bring criminal charges against a white New York City police officer in the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner, a black man whose dying words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry as the nation confronted a long history of police brutality.

The decision to end a yearslong civil rights investigation without charges was made by Attorney General William Barr and was announced the day before the five-year anniversary of the deadly encounter, just as the statute of limitations was set to expire.

Civil rights prosecutors in Washington had favored filing criminal charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo, but ultimately Barr sided instead with other federal prosecutors based in Brooklyn who said the evidence wasn’t sufficient to make a case, a Justice Department official told The Associated Press.

U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue, of the Eastern District of New York, said in a news conference that while the death was tragic, there was insufficient evidence to prove that Pantaleo willfully violated Garner’s civil rights.

“Even if we could prove that Officer Pantaleo’s hold of Mr. Garner constituted unreasonable force, we would still have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Officer Pantaleo acted willfully in violation of the law,” Donoghue said.

Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, and the Rev. Al Sharpton said they were outraged. Sharpton called for the NYPD to fire Pantaleo, who’s been on desk duty since Garner’s death and is awaiting the results of a disciplinary hearing that could lead to termination.

Garner’s death in 2014, during an arrest over alleged sales of untaxed cigarettes on Staten Island, came at a time of growing public outcry over police killings of unarmed black men. Weeks after Garner’s death, protests erupted in Ferguson, Mo., over the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed teenager.