NEW YORK — Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold more than five years ago, has been fired from the police force, Commissioner James O’Neill said Monday.
O’Neill’s long-awaited decision brings a delayed measure of accountability for the death of a 43-year-old father whose last words — “I can’t breathe” — became a rallying cry for the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement.
“The unintended consequence of Mr. Garner’s death must have a consequence of its own,” O’Neill said at a news conference at NYPD headquarters in Manhattan. “… It is clear that Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer.”
Pantaleo has been terminated effective immediately, O’Neill said. He said he took “no pleasure” in making the call.
The commissioner announced Pantaleo’s firing about two weeks after an NYPD judge recommended his dismissal from the force — and about a month after the U.S. Department of Justice said it would would not bring federal criminal charges against him.
O’Neill granted a key wish of Garner’s family and police-reform activists, who have watched Pantaleo avoid criminal charges while remaining on the NYPD’s payroll since the infamous chokehold was applied on July 17, 2014.
“After five long years, Eric Garner’s family, the City of New York, and a nation that long has had watchful eyes upon this case finally have closure,” said Fred Davie, the chair of the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the independent police oversight agency that prosecuted Pantaleo.
But the decision sparked an immediate backlash from the city’s largest police union, the Police Benevolent Association, which has vigorously defended Pantaleo over the last five years.
In a scathing statement Monday, union President Patrick Lynch accused O’Neill of choosing “his own self-interest over the police officers he claims to lead.” He urged cops to proceed with the “utmost caution,” suggesting the police force may be headed for a slowdown.
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“The damage is already done,” Lynch said. “The NYPD will remain rudderless and frozen, and Commissioner O’Neill will never be able to bring it back.”
O’Neill, who spent almost 34 years as a uniformed officer, acknowledged that his decision would likely upset the NYPD’s rank-and-file force: “If I was still a cop, I’d probably be mad at me,” he said.
The NYPD started disciplinary proceedings against Pantaleo just last year after waiting nearly four years for federal prosecutors to wrap up their investigation of Garner’s death. The probe was closed in July of this year.
The Police Department is working to finalize the details of a disciplinary trial for Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, who was a supervising officer on the scene of Garner’s attempted arrest.
After a roughly three-week internal trial, Deputy Commissioner Rosemarie Maldonado found Pantaleo acted recklessly by putting his arm around Garner’s neck that day as he and other officers tried to arrest him for allegedly selling loose cigarettes.
Pantaleo denied putting Garner in a banned chokehold despite giving a description of the maneuver that was “completely consistent” with his actions, which were caught on video, Maldonado wrote in her 46-page ruling. That was enough to warrant his firing even though the judge ruled there was not enough evidence to prove Pantaleo intentionally blocked Garner’s breathing.
In his 13-minute speech announcing Pantaleo’s firing, O’Neill recounted how Pantaleo and another officer were sent to a stretch of Bay Street in response to complaints about drug use and crime near Tompkinsville Park.
Garner made it “abundantly clear” that he did not want to cooperate with the cops, who were trying to make a “lawful arrest,” O’Neill said. In the commissioner’s view, widely publicized video of the incident shows Pantaleo trying to use NYPD-sanctioned maneuvers in his attempts to collar Garner.
But then Pantaleo wrapped his forearm around Garner’s neck as they fell down and kept it there after they hit the pavement — which is where the cop went too far, according to O’Neill and Maldonado.
“Every time I watch the video, I say to myself, as probably all of you do, to Mr. Garner: ‘Don’t do it. Comply.’ To Officer Pantaleo: ‘Don’t do it,'” O’Neill said. “I said that about the decisions made by both Officer Pantaleo and Mr. Garner.”
“But none of us can take back our decisions, most especially when they lead to the death of another human being.”