NEW YORK (Reuters) – A white New York City police officer who killed an unarmed black man with a banned chokehold in 2014 should be fired, a police judge recommended on Friday in a case that stoked the Black Lives Matter movement and reverberated in the U.S. presidential campaign.
Officer Daniel Pantaleo had been on desk duty since widely viewed cellphone videos showed him using the chokehold on Eric Garner during an attempted arrest on a sidewalk in Staten Island, one of five boroughs in the most populous U.S. city. Police believed Garner was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.
Garner’s repeated dying cries of “I can’t breathe!” became a rallying cry for the growing Black Lives Matter movement, which protests police brutality against blacks around the country.
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. Protesters chanted “Fire Pantaleo!” during de Blasio’s opening statement in Wednesday’s presidential primary debate in Detroit.
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.
“Today, we finally saw a step towards justice and accountability,” de Blasio told reporters at City Hall. “We saw a process that was actually fair and impartial, and I hope that this will now bring the Garner family a sense of closure and the beginning of some peace.”
The department immediately suspended Pantaleo without pay for 30 days, following standard practice, while the recommendation undergoes final review. The police commissioner is expected to follow the judge’s recommendation, CNN reported.
Firing was one of the few punishments 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.
