Fired Buffalo police officer finds new support

CHICAGO — The arts collective at the Inner-City Muslim Action Network on Chicago’s Southwest Side supports artists from across the country, encouraging them to inspire change through storytelling

But the details of Cariol Horne’s story, shared there during a summer of intense national conversation over police abuse, struck an unusually troubling note - Horne has maintained for 15 years that she was fired from the Buffalo Police Department because she broke ranks and saved a man who was being choked by another cop during an arrest.

Her dismissal, when she was just shy of 20 years on the job, cost Horne a full pension.

Now the dramatic story has become part of an unusual musical collaboration between IMAN founder Rami Nashashibi and a Buffalo music artist who wrote a nine-track album, a reflection on race and social justice that calls for spiritual healing and radical changes, such as a law Horne helped pen that makes it mandatory for officers to intervene and stop police abuse.

But Horne’s story has not only been elevated in the music.

At the request of IMAN, powerhouse Chicago law firm Kirkland & Ellis agreed to review her firing and this month launched a court battle to get Horne’s job back, a surprising new legal development in her long-standing effort to fight the decision that ended her career.

A legal team that includes a former White

House chief legal counsel “The last 15 years has to President Barack Obabeen an uphill battle,” ma filed a motion in New Horne told the Chicago York state court seeking to Tribune in a recent invacate Horne’s firing, arguterview. “And now that ing it was “in the interest IMAN has come into my of justice” to do so. The life, I feel like I am about filing cited recent examto reach the top. It feels ples of arrests that led to liberating.” controversial deaths While IMAN’s work blamed on asphyxia, infocuses mainly on helping cluding those of Daniel people released from jail Prude in Rochester, New and prison make a sucYork, and George Floyd in cessful transition, commuMinneapolis, which hapnity organizing is a key pened as fellow officers component of its work. looked on. The collective has woven

“For doing precisely the arts into that mission, what we expect and hope including by maintaining a from our law enforcement national roster of artists officers - upholding the who gather for retreats, law and protecting life - quarterly conference calls Ms. Horne was assaulted and are eligible for an by her colleague, and her annual fellowship. employment was terminatDrea D’Nur, who is ed,” the lawsuit reads. “… from Buffalo and is one of In Buffalo, in America, the rostered artists, knew and in the world the pubHorne’s story, and shared lic is now recognizing the it with Nashashibi earlier cost of not having officers in the year while they like Ms. Horne who are were producing the album willing to intervene.” “This Love Thing,” which

The new legal battle has aimed to explore the pain yet to play out in court, so many communities but on Oct. 22 Horne was worldwide were experiencat Chicago’s DuSableing.Museum of African American Vocalists, emcees, spoHistory in a dimly lit roken-word poets and mutunda for the official lissicians - many of them tening party for the allongtime IMAN artists - bum, which includes the took part, including Lousingle “Mama Please,” a isville community activist song about police violence and musician Jecorey Arand oppression that spotthur, who was recently lights Horne’s story. elected to the city council

Horne, 52, sat listening in that city, where the fatal in the center of the room shooting of Breonna Taywith the producers, headlor by police has sparked phones rimmed in blue protests and calls for relight snug on her head of form. white hair. She rocked “There is this intersecgently, her head down as tion between art and social she listened to the lyrics. justice,” D’Nur said.

“Mama, please. I can’t “(Singer-songwriter) Nina breathe. Get these demons Simone said an artist’s off of me.” duty is to reflect the

Later, a video for the times.” song, which features Nashashibi was moved, Horne and is dedicated to and then got to know her, was played for the Horne personally on trips audience. to Buffalo this summer to work with D’Nur on the album. He attended protests with her just as her case had taken on new life in the wake of the Floyd case, and found Horne and her story genuine. He decided to see if there were any legal options available to help her.

“I have been doing this work 25 years,” he.said. “She is not given to hyperbole. She is not a woman that condemns all police officers, she is a woman who tells her story with profound believability because she just shows up. Every instinct I have about Cariol has guided me to what I think others have been guided to, which is (she is) an extraordinary mother, grandmother, beautiful person who has been speaking her truth.”

Nashashibi was not deterred, either, by the number of times Horne’s story had been rejected by fellow officers and the courts, saying recent cases - including in Chicago - have shown that official police versions of events are not always accurate.

Nashashibi was already speaking to Kirkland & Ellis about the potential of opening a legal clinic in the community when he decided to call and tell them about Horne.

The firm agreed to take her case in June, along with a team that includes attorneys from Harvard Law School.

Neil Eggleston, a partner at Kirkland who served as White House legal counsel under Obama and oversaw the administration’s major task force on police reform, said the understanding of policing after Floyd and similar cases now dictates that officers like Horne should be celebrated - not silenced.

“I think in some ways the fundamental aspect of the recommendations from the task force were to emphasize that police officers are protectors of the public and not adversaries of the public,” Eggleston said. “Cariol presents a classic example of that, which was she was acting to protect the public. And arrestees have as much right to be protected.”

Exactly what happened on Nov. 1, 2006, has been the subject of intense debate and several legal probes over the years.

Everyone agrees Buffalo officers were trying to remove a suspect from a home when Horne arrived.

According to the new lawsuit filed by her attorneys, Horne, who is Black, saw Officer Gregory Kwiatkowski, who is white, punch the handcuffed suspect, Neal Mack, who is also Black. Then, as Mack was being removed from his home, Kwiatkowski pulled him down and put him in a chokehold, prompting Horne to tell him to stop and to physically remove his arm from Mack’s neck, the lawsuit alleges.

Kwiatkowski has acknowledged he put Mack in a “bear hug headlock,” according to the lawsuit and court documents. But the officer said it was Horne who physically attacked him by jumping on him - something Horne denies.

“Ms. Horne told Mr. Kwiatkowski that he was choking Mr. Mack, but Mr. Kwiatkowski did not stop,” the lawsuit reads. “… Horne then intervened to prevent Mr. Kwiatkowski from inflicting serious harm or death.”

According to the filing,

Kwiatkowski then struck Horne, causing enough damage that she required dental surgery.

After the department filed disciplinary charges against her, Horne opted not to accept an offer of a short suspension, and also demanded that her hearing be public.

“I was not going to take a suspension for something I didn’t do,” she told the Tribune, explaining the decision.

In 2008, an independent hearing officer sustained 11 department charges against Horne, including that she interfered with the arrest and failed to assist Kwiatkowski.

Horne challenged her firing in court, but failed.

While the filing from her new Chicago lawyers does not bring new evidence, it argues that key witness statements do not dispute the story Horne has been telling from the start: that she intervened to protect Mack.

“Both accounts converge on a description of a violent arrest, involving a chokehold, during which Ms. Horne intervened with reasonable acts calculated to prevent a death by chokehold,” the lawsuit reads. “While the accounts differ on the extent of force Ms. Horne used to remove Mr. Kwiatkowski … all accounts include his use of a chokehold and another officer’s intervention.”

The lawsuit also notes that the charges against Mack, the suspect, were later dropped, and that Kwiatkowski, who resigned from the force in 2011, was later convicted in an unrelated federal civil rights case in which he slammed the heads of four Black teens into a squad car.