How I found ‘choke’ tape

When I first set eyes on Ramsey Orta, he was sitting alone on a bicycle outside his Staten Island home. Within hours, his video capturing Eric Garner’s death in police custody went viral — creating a firestorm of controversy that rages to this day.

I was driving through Staten Island headed to a photo job when a call came in over the police radio. The voice called for a mobilization of cops to a crime scene. Normally, they state what kind of crime it is; in this case, they didn’t. That kind of set off a bell.

The voice gave an address right off the exit I was approaching, so I called the photo desk and said, “This sounds interesting. You want me to check this out?”

The editor, Kevin Macdonald, said sure, and it took me 10 to 15 minutes to reach Bay St. I got out of the car, and there were people all over the place. Angry people. Once I started to ask questions, they were direct: “A cop killed somebody.”

There were also a lot of white shirts on the scene — NYPD brass. That was another indication there was something more to this.

So I started asking if anybody had any video or pictures. And people kept telling me about this guy who had the whole incident on tape. I didn’t know what that meant, but I knew that I needed to track this guy down. “I’ll take you to his house,” a guy volunteered.

He led me a few blocks away, and that’s where I saw Ramsey sitting on his bike right out front. He had three videos, in sequence, from the scene. He helped me download the video off his phone.

He gave it to me for free, which is unusual. I think it was because he was so outraged that somebody was killed. He had a videotape of a cop appearing to beat a guy at the same place one week before.

He absolutely believed the cops were coming there to harass the locals. That was the story he wanted to tell, and he wasn’t looking for any money.

Eventually, we paid him for the exclusive rights to the videos.