NYPD officer blamed in man’s 2014 death by chokehold is fired

NEW YORK — The New York City police officer whose chokehold was partly blamed for Eric Garner’s death in police custody in 2014 was fired from the police department on Monday, ending a bitter, five-year legal battle that had cast a shadow over the nation’s largest police force and the city it protects.

Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill dismissed the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, just over two weeks after a police administrative judge found him guilty of violating a department ban on chokeholds.

“The unintended consequence of Mr. Garner’s death must have a consequence of its own,” O’Neill said. “Therefore I agree with the deputy commissioner of trial’s legal findings and recommendations. It is clear that Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer.”

Garner died July 17, 2014, after Pantaleo tackled him from behind, then, along with other officers, pressed him down on the pavement. Captured on video, the arrest and Garner’s last words — “I can’t breathe” — galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement.

The case had defined the police department’s relationship with the public under Mayor Bill de Blasio, who campaigned for office on a promise to reverse the aggressive policing of lowlevel crimes — known as the “broken windows” strategy — that his predecessor had championed. The mayor had come under intense criticism for not pushing to have Pantaleo fired sooner.

At a news conference in City Hall, de Blasio said the firing of Pantaleo “ended a chapter that has brought our people so much pain and so much fear these last five years.”

“Today we have finally seen justice done,” said de Blasio, who is running for president on his credentials as a progressive Democrat. “We must devote ourselves to this simple goal: No one should have to go through the agony that the city has gone through here. Let this be the last tragedy.”

The leader of the city’s largest police union immediately denounced the decision, saying O’Neill had bowed to “anti-police extremists” and that Pantaleo’s dismissal sent a message that the city did not stand behind its officers when they make arrests.

“We are urging all New York City police officers to proceed with the utmost caution in this new reality, in which they may be deemed ‘reckless’ just for doing their job,” the Police Benevolent Association president, Patrick J. Lynch, said in a statement. “We will uphold our oath, but we cannot and will not do so by needlessly jeopardizing our careers or personal safety.”

Garner’s family said it would continue to press for congressional hearings into his death and for state legislation making it a crime for a police officer to use a chokehold. They also continued to call for other officers involved in Garner’s arrest to be punished.

“For Commissioner O’Neill, I thank you for doing the right thing,” said Emerald Garner, Eric Garner’s daughter, at a news conference. “You finally made a decision that should have been made five years ago.”

For years, the Garner family, elected officials and critics of NYPD have said Garner’s death was an outcome of the department’s “broken windows” strategy, which affected black and Latino neighborhoods disproportionately.

Garner died as he was being arrested on charges of selling untaxed cigarettes on Staten Island.