Gwen Carr holds a portrait of her son Eric Garner in New York, July 6, 2015. Photo / Mark Kauzlarich, New York Times file
The last words Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, uttered on a New York City footpath in 2014 instantly became a US rallying cry against police brutality.
"I can't breathe," Garner pleaded 11 times after a police officer in plainclothes placed his arm across his neck and pulled him to the ground while other officers handcuffed him.
The encounter was captured on a video that ricocheted around the world, set off protests and prompted calls for the officers to be fired and criminally charged.
Garner's death was part of a succession of police killings across the US that became part of a wrenching conversation about how officers treat people in predominantly poor and minority communities.
Now, the officer who wrapped his arm around Garner's neck, Daniel Pantaleo, 33, faces a public trial that could lead to his firing. Pantaleo has denied wrongdoing and his lawyer argues that he did not apply a chokehold.
The trial, scheduled to start tomorrow at Police Department headquarters, has been long-awaited by the Garner family, whose campaign to hold the police accountable for what they say is an unjustified use of force took on greater significance after Garner's daughter, Erica Garner, died in 2017.
The city paid US$5.9 million to settle a lawsuit with the family after a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has fought and delayed the family's efforts to have all the police officers involved in the encounter punished.
"It was at least a dozen more who just did nothing, or either they pounced on him, they choked him, they filed false reports," Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, said in an interview.
"It's about all of those officers who committed an injustice that day and they all need to stand accountable."
Pantaleo faces charges of reckless use of a chokehold and intentional restriction of breathing. His lawyer says that Pantaleo did not use a chokehold, but a different technique that is taught to officers in training and is known as a seatbelt.
So the trial will have to settle two questions at the heart of the case: Was the manoeuvre Pantaleo used a chokehold? And, if so, was the officer justified in using it to subdue an unarmed man during a low-level arrest?
Last week, the Police Department judge overseeing the trial said that prosecutors must prove that Pantaleo's actions went beyond a violation of departmental rules and constituted a crime — an unusually high bar.
Video of the fatal encounter was recorded by Ramsey Orta, a friend of Garner's who is expected to testify at Pantaleo's trial.
It captured Garner telling officers in street clothes to leave him alone after they approached him outside a beauty supply store on July 17, 2014, not far from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.
Garner had repeated encounters with the police and believed that he was being harassed.
"This stops today," he told the officers before they moved to arrest him over accusations that he was selling untaxed cigarettes.
As one officer tried to grab Garner's hand, he slipped free. Then Pantaleo slid one arm around Garner's neck and another under his left arm and dragged him to the ground. On the pavement, he begged for air.
The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide and said he died from a chokehold and the compression of his chest from lying prone. The findings are a crucial issue in the trial and Pantaleo's defence lawyer plans to dispute them.
A judge says a disciplinary trial against the white police officer who put Eric Garner in an apparent chokehold can proceed.
— AJ+ (@ajplus) May 9, 2019
Chokeholds violate NYPD policy.
Medical examiners say it caused Garner’s death almost 5 years ago. The officer has yet to be disciplined. pic.twitter.com/KrRPbZOywM
Stuart London, the police union lawyer representing Pantaleo, said the technique his client used was the seatbelt manoeuver taught in the Police Academy, not a chokehold. He plans to argue that Garner, who was overweight and severely asthmatic, died because of poor health.
"Those who have been able to not come to a rushed judgment, but have looked at the video in explicit detail, see Pantaleo's intent and objective was to take him down pursuant to how he was taught by NYPD, control him when they got on the ground, and then have him cuffed," London said in an interview.
"There was never any intent for him to exert pressure on his neck and choke him out the way the case has been portrayed."
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent city agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct, is prosecuting the case against Pantaleo and is seeking his termination.
The ruling by the judge, Rosemarie Maldonado, the deputy police commissioner in charge of trials, denied London's motion to dismiss the case. But her ruling means that prosecutors need to prove that Pantaleo's actions rose to the crimes of assault and strangulation in order to avoid the state's prohibition on bringing misconduct charges more than 18 months after occurrence.
Colleen Roache, a spokeswoman for the review board, said prosecutors understood their obligation when they served Pantaleo with the charges last July.
But critics have said the review board's failure to file charges sooner had made the prosecutors' case significantly harder to prove.
The Police Department banned chokeholds in 1993 amid concern about a rising number of civilian deaths in police custody. In 2016, the department added an exception to its chokehold ban under certain circumstances, which critics said made it easier for officers to justify its use.
After Garner's death, the Police Department spent US$35 million to retrain officers not to use chokeholds, but they continue to use the manoeuvre and rarely face punishment.
The trial is expected to last two weeks, with testimony from about two dozen witnesses. Pantaleo has not decided whether he will testify, London said.
When the trial ends, Maldonado, will decide if Pantaleo is guilty. If guilt is determined, she will recommend a penalty to Police Commissioner James O'Neill, who will make the final decision.
Short of firing, any discipline of Pantaleo, a 13-year veteran, may never become public because of a state law that shields police disciplinary records from public disclosure.
The delays and secrecy surrounding officer discipline are part of the reason that police reform advocates say the public has lost trust in the city's process for assessing complaints against officers.
c.2019 New York Times News Service
Written by: Ashley Southall
Photographs by: Mark Kauzlarich and Victor Blue
© 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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