De Blasio’s Garner disgrace

This is the New York Daily News, but I’m writing for readers in Waterloo, Iowa, and Manchester, N.H. — and to the CNN presidential debate moderators who can force Mayor Bill de Blasio to finally answer a critical question.

Five years after Eric Garner’s killing ignited citywide protests. Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who put him in a banned chokehold, is still drawing checks as a member of the New York Police Department.

Five years! What happened?

“In the case of Eric Garner, the Justice Department controls that situation right now,” de Blasio said in 2016, in one of his many variations of buck-passing legalese justifying the sustained failure of his NYPD to police itself after a Staten Island grand jury declined to bring charges against Pantaleo. “That’s appropriate and we yield to that.”

In fact, there was nothing stopping the Police Department from disciplining Pantaleo. The proof is that, as de Blasio prepared to run for president, his NYPD reversed course and held a “trial” this June as the feds were still dithering about whether or not to bring charges.

At that departmental hearing, we learned that Pantaleo’s commander said at the time of Garner’s death that it was “not a big deal.” That Pantaleo’s partner initially wrote up fake paperwork about the reason for the fatal arrest. That an Internal Affairs officer had recommended disciplinary charges in 2015, and that just after Garner’s death, a city medical examiner had found it was a homicide, caused by the chokehold.

All of that had been kept conveniently secret until the hearing in 2019, weeks ahead of the feds’ deadline to decide whether or not to to charge Pantaleo. The Police Department “verdict,” though, was delayed until next month, meaning the city got to hear the Justice Department’s decision not to press charges before rendering its own decision.

Just after the feds punted, the mayor lamented that “years ago, we put our faith in the federal government to act. We won’t make that mistake again.”

He then told New Yorkers “we’re going to respect that process,” now meaning the NYPD’s administrative hearing, and that “there will be closure in August.”

Funny how each new process keeps aligning with de Blasio’s political needs.

Months after Garner’s death, the city’s legal department conveniently discovered a new interpretation — since upheld by the courts — of a decades-old law, so that officer disciplinary records abruptly became state secrets, supposedly to protect the privacy of our civil servants. The mayor says he wants Albany to change the law now, but that — you guessed it — he has to respect the process.

Back to Pantaleo’s departmental hearing. The mayor says he can’t prejudge it, since “the assistant commissioner at the NYPD who is in charge of the trials will issue an opinion — uh, a verdict, an opinion, a recommendation — to the commissioner and then Commissioner O’Neil makes the final decision. So we’re going to respect that process.”

Just as officer chokeholds aren’t against the law, but a violation of departmental rules, the “trial” in this process is really just an administrative hearing, where the decision from the judge is really just a recommendation conveyed to the commissioner, who’s finally judge, jury and executioner here.

Commissioners have often watered down or outright tossed disciplinary verdict-opinion-recommendations, including in substantiated complaints to the Civilian Complaint Review Board about Pantaleo before he killed Garner.

If Pantaleo is fired now, it will come after he’s been paid what might be a half million dollars, including overtime, since killing Garner — and after the mayor bought enough time to find his political footing, win a second term and run for president.

In a way, de Blasio — once again calling for sunlight even as he hides in someone else’s shadow — is a beneficiary of his sub-one-percent national insignificance, since that means none of the other Democrats on the national debate stage want to waste their time engaging with him.

But the moderators can: “Eric Garner was killed on your watch five years ago. The officer who killed him is still a member of the NYPD. Why?”

harrysiegel@gmail.com