- Title: New York police officer fired for deadly 2014 chokehold on Eric Garner
- Date: 19th August 2019
- Summary: NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (FILE - DECEMBER 3, 2014) (REUTERS) EXTERIOR OF SHOP WHERE ERIC GARNER HAD ALTERCATION WITH POLICE AND DIED VARIOUS OF MEMORIAL OUTSIDE THE SHOP SIGN READING (English): 'HIS NAME WAS ERIC GARNER - FATHER SON HUSBAND FRIEND'
- Embargoed: 2nd September 2019 17:54
- Keywords: Eric Garner I can't breathe New York Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo Gwen Carr Police Commissioner James O'Neill
- Location: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- City: NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES
- Country: USA
- Topics: Crime/Law/Justice
- Reuters ID: LVA002ASVWKSN
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: The white New York Police Department officer who used a deadly chokehold on Eric Garner while trying to arrest him in 2014, giving rise to the Black Lives Matter movement, was fired on Monday (August 19), Commissioner James O'Neill said.
The officer, Daniel Pantaleo, was suspended earlier this month after a departmental judge ruled that the officer should be fired. He had previously been on desk duty since he was seen in widely viewed cellphone videos using a banned chokehold on Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk during an attempted arrest.
Police believed Garner was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.
Garner's repeated dying cries of "I can't breathe," widely viewed on social media, became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, which protests what its leaders call the disparate use of excessive force against black people across the United States.
His death, and the slow-moving investigations that followed, have generated some of the harshest criticisms of Mayor Bill de Blasio during his tenure and have spilled over into his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
The case tested the liberal mayor's relationships with both civil rights activists, who have long complained that the city's black and Latino residents are harassed by police, and the rank-and-file police officers who work for him, some of whom say they have been made scapegoats by his office.
Firing was one of the few punishments left available. A Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo in 2014 on criminal charges, and federal prosecutors said last month they would not bring charges because there was insufficient evidence.
In 2015, New York City paid a $5.9 million settlement to Garner's family to avoid a civil lawsuit. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
- Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2019. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
- Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
