Daniel Pantaleo – the New York City Police Officer who put Eric Garner in a prohibited chokehold for the alleged crime of selling loose cigarettes – has been fired. An administrative judge recommended as much two weeks ago and, today, New York Police Department Commissioner James O’Neill accepted and executed the recommendation. In the five years since administering the prohibited chokehold, Pantaleo has been the focus of a protracted legal battle that saw him repeatedly escaping meaningful consequences for having applied the chokehold.
The city’s Police Benevolent Association president, Patrick Lynch, reacted angrily to the firing, insisting that Pantaelo had only been doing his job when he applied the chokehold to the man whose crime was allegedly selling loose cigarettes.
Garner went into cardiac arrest in the immediate aftermath Pantaleo’s chokehold, dying after repeatedly saying that he could not breathe. Officers on the scene ignored his pleas for help, as did EMS responders who did nothing to help the dying man. The prohibited chokehold was filmed and widely distributed; the Black Lives Matter movement used the phrase in its ongoing protests against wanton police brutality. Those protests eventually included athletes across the nation, including LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick. In the aftermath of Pantaleo’s use of the chokehold, officers inflated charges against Garner to make it seems as if his alleged crime was far more serious than it was actually alleged to have been.
Pantaleo has, until today, escaped consequence for his illegal chokehold. Despite two separate medical examiners concluding that Pantaleo’s chokehold lead directly to Garner’s death, a grand jury refused to indict him. In the aftermath of the grand jury’s finding, Pantaleo offered the following:
“I became a police officer to help people and to protect those who can’t protect themselves… It is never my intention to harm anyone and I feel very bad about the death of Mr. Garner. My family and I include him and his family in our prayers and I hope that they will accept my personal condolences for their loss.”
Pantaleo made that claim despite having been repeatedly cited for his approach to his job.
Then last month, Attorney General William Barr then excused Pantaleo’s chokehold despite his own Civil Rights Division finding that there was suitable justification to pursue charges against the officer. According to Richard Donoghue, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, “an officer’s mistake, fear, misperception or even poor judgment does not constitute willful conduct under federal criminal civil rights law.” (It should be noted that Barr’s own commitment to policing was made clear several weeks after excusing Pantaleo when he declared that those opposed to police brutality were functionally attacking the police.)
Pantaleo is expected to appeal the decision to fire him. His lawyer inexplicably claimed that Pantaleo is both disappointed and upset about the outcome of an investigation that took five years and saw him face no substantive consequences until today’s firing.
If you don’t do anything wrong, you shouldn’t lose your job.
If you do something wrong and it leads to a death, getting fired is a trivial sanction.
What conclusions should be drawn from this firing other than the people in charge are incompetent?Report
What conclusions should be drawn from this firing other than the people in charge are incompetent?
Sounds to me like they’re fairly competent.
The police union does good work. (Though, apparently, some stuff even they can’t protect against.)Report
In contrast, some good news from California:
Newsom signs ‘Stephon Clark’s Law,’ setting new rules on police use of force
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-california-police-use-of-force-law-signed-20190711-story.htmlReport
from the article:
So only in large urban areas are police trained in actual policing? That explains a lot.Report
“Language requiring deescalation and a definition of what “necessary” force means were removed”
womp womp
they won’t even have to change the script except to scribble out “reasonable” and write in “necessary”Report
Tomorrow’s post: Daniel Pantaleo Has Been Re-Hired By Neighboring PrecinctReport
It *is* interesting that he actually got Fired fired, not just “agreed to leave the department in exchange for no entry in his permanent record” fired.
Of course, there’s still a lengthy appeal to work through, and having been thrown a bone the mob may find their hunger satiated. So maybe everyone can come out a winner!Report
Yeah, if the firing doesn’t also strip away his credentials, it’s really just a layoff.Report
What “credentials” are you talking about? It’s not as though there is some sort of Cop License that makes you eligible for hiring elsewhere, or, more to the point, the lack of which makes you ineligible to be hired elsewhere. If some other jurisdiction wants to take the political heat — and there are probably some jurisdictions where his conduct would be regarded as a feature rather than a bug — it can hire him.Report
In the private sector, having failed in a way that costs your employer public embarrassment and a ton of money can be a detriment to finding a new job. Below the C-suite level, anyway.Report
Taking your comment literally, in New York City you are assigned to a particular precinct, but your actual employer is the NYPD. Therefore, he wouldn’t be able to be hired as a police officer anywhere in NYC. Having said that, if some town on Long Island, or upstate, or in New Jersey wants to take the heat, they could hire him tomorrow.Report
{Ed Note: Tom Payne is a banned commenter}
If the police have a policy of not using Tasers at the old folks home because of the increased risk of heart failure, and an officer Tases and kills an old man with a heart condition, the heart condition is the direct cause of death, but the officer is responsible for it.Report
Actually, failed capitalistic economic led to Garner’s death, in as much as selling loose cigarettes is a “prohibited” economic activity and one of the few he could apparently engage in. His size was not a factor until the Office applied said chokehold to subdue him for trying to be entrepreneurial.Report
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