New York police kill Eric Garner, then sabotage crime-fighting

This video from the USA says about itself:

“I Can’t Breathe” – Eric Garner Dies After NYPD Chokehold (Full Video Compilation)

3 December 2014

This compilation contains the most uncut videos available for this incident.

On July 17, 2014, at 202 Bay Street in Tompkinsville, Staten Island, New York, United States, Eric Garner died of a heart-attack after being placed in a choke-hold by an officer (a tactic banned by the Police Department). On this day, he was initially approached by police officer Justin Damico. A fellow officer, Daniel Pantaleo, put Garner on the ground by the use of force, including a headlock or chokehold shown in a widely viewed video recording of the event. Garner died some minutes later. …

On August 1, 2014, medical examiners concluded that police conduct in combination with Garner’s heart problems, obesity and asthma was the primary cause of death. As a result of Garner’s death, four EMTs and paramedics who responded to Garner’s death were suspended without pay on July 21, 2014, and officers Justin Damico and Daniel Pantaleo were placed on desk duty, the latter stripped of his service gun and badge.

The event stirred public protests and rallies with charges of police brutality and was broadcast nationally over various media networks.

On December 3, 2014, a grand jury decided not to indict Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who was involved in Garner’s death.

From the Huffington Post in the USA:

HuffPost Must Reads: What De Blasio and the NYPD Don’t Want You To Know

Last summer, we were brainstorming story ideas, as editors often do. The one-year anniversary of Eric Garner’s death had just passed, and Nick wondered aloud, “Remember that police slowdown last winter? Wasn’t that after the Eric Garner trial, when the police weren’t indicted for his death? What exactly happened then?” We researched the coverage. No one had written about the slowdown in depth. So we decided to file Freedom Of Information Law (FOIL) requests with the mayor’s office and the NYPD. They stalled … and stalled … and stalled. Today, nearly a year later, we haven’t received a single relevant document. But before we tell you exactly how the mayor’s office and the NYPD are refusing to cooperate, let’s revisit December 2014 with HuffPost’s social justice reporter Christopher Mathias, who is working on the story.

Must Reads: Let’s start from the beginning. What happened again?

Mathias: In early December 2014, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict the NYPD officers involved in the chokehold death of a black 43-year-old father named Eric Garner. This set off massive protests in New York and across the country. The night of the decision, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters that he understood the frustration over Garner’s death. He said he once told his black son to be careful around police. This comment — and the idea that police can be of danger to young black men — angered New York’s police unions.

Two weeks later, after daily Black Lives Matter protests in the city that saw thousands of protesters shutting down bridges, tunnels and major avenues, a man named Ibrahim Brinsley posted a photo of a gun to Instagram. … A short time later, Brinsley walked up to a police cruiser in Brooklyn. He shot and killed two police officers — Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos.

Pat Lynch, president of the city’s largest police union, said de Blasio had “blood on [his] hands,” arguing that the mayor had implicitly invited violence against police officers by not condemning Black Lives Matter protesters, and by acknowledging that he’d talked to his son about being careful around cops. At the televised funerals for Liu and Ramos, many police officers turned their backs on the mayor as he spoke.

Then officers across the city staged a dramatic work slowdown. During the week ending Jan. 4, for example, officers issued 92 percent fewer criminal summonses — handed out for minor offenses like drinking in public — than during the same period the previous year. Overall, arrests dropped 56 percent, and the number of traffic tickets, a major source of revenue for the city, plunged.

Must Reads: How did the NYPD coordinate such a massive slow down on such a large scale?

Mathias: It’s not entirely clear, but the most likely theory is that unions had encouraged officers to engage in a slowdown as a means of putting pressure on de Blasio. But NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton insisted the slowdown was due in part to his officers’ exhaustion from policing nightly Black Lives Matter protests. Another theory was that officers were genuinely afraid that they could become the next Wenjian Liu or Rafael Ramos.

Must Reads: Walk us through what you requested from the mayor’s office and the NYPD.

Mathias: Last August, I filed FOIL requests to the NYPD asking for all emails among senior officers containing keywords like “slowdown” or “summons,” among several others. I sent the same request to the mayor’s office. The emails I requested under FOIL, I hoped, could shed light on how exactly the slowdown was coordinated, and by whom. The emails might also highlight how the mayor and the police commissioner handled one of the worst city government crises in recent memory.

Must Reads: How did the NYPD and the mayor’s office respond?

Mathias: It’s been nine months and nary an email have I received from my FOIL requests. The mayor’s office keeps pushing back, stating I’d receive a response in November, then January, then April, and now sometime in May. The NYPD flat-out denied my FOIL request, saying that the information I requested, if disclosed, “would reveal non-routine techniques and practices,” and would “interfere with law enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings.” We appealed their decision, and last week heard that our appeal was denied. We’re now considering next steps.

Must Reads: We understand the NYPD is within their rights to deny such requests, but you reached out to the New York State Committee on Open Government for comment about the mayor’s office egregious use of extensions. What did they say?

Mathias: “We don’t believe that the law permits repeated extensions,” said Kristin O’Neill, assistant director of the NYSCOG.

Waiting nine months for a request to be either granted or denied, she added, is unusual.

Want to know more? We do, too. We’ll keep you posted.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT REPLACES NEW YORK TEAM OF LAWYERS AND AGENTS IN ERIC GARNER CASE In hopes to jump-start the case and bring charges. [NYT]

American justice: New York City cop who killed Eric Garner may lose vacation days: here.

Last week, more than four years after New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo killed unarmed Eric Garner on the streets of Staten Island with an illegal chokehold, Pantaleo faced the first hearing in a New York City Police Department (NYPD) disciplinary trial set to begin in May. Pantaleo’s supervisor, Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, will also face a departmental trial: here.

BARR STEPS IN FOR CHOKEHOLD COP The Justice Department will not pursue federal civil rights charges against Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City police officer who placed Eric Garner in a chokehold before his death. Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, was the ultimate decision-maker on the case. [HuffPost]

Almost exactly five years after the police killing of Eric Garner in New York, the US Justice Department announced that it would not bring federal charges against Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who put Garner in the chokehold that led to his death. The federal government dragged out its investigation of the homicide until just before the expiration of the statute of limitations for filing the most serious charges. Attorney General William P. Barr’s decision is a green light for continued brutalization of the working class, up to and including police killings: here.

JUDGE: ERIC GARNER KILLER WAS ‘UNTRUTHFUL’ The New York City police officer who placed Eric Garner in a chokehold before his death was “untruthful” during interviews with investigators following the fatal encounter, a police administrative judge said in an opinion obtained by The New York Times. [HuffPost]

The New York Police Department (NYPD) fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who strangled to death Staten Island resident Eric Garner on July 17, 2014. It has taken over five years for the American state—especially New York City’s Democratic political establishment—to give the perpetrator of one the most visible and notorious police killings in decades even the most minimal punishment available: here.