The investigation into the death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD will pass to Jeff Sessions, the incoming attorney general who has criticized efforts by the Justice Department to end discriminatory policing and the use of excessive force in poor, mainly black communities.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who is overseeing the probe, is expected to step down before prosecutors reach a resolution in the case, The Washington Post reported Friday.
In December, Lynch shifted the investigation to Washington from Brooklyn following a disagreement between prosecutors there and at headquarters, with prosecutors in Brooklyn doubting whether they could prove in court that the use of force by Daniel Pantaleo, the NYPD officer whose chokehold of Garner, a black man, led to the latter’s death on Staten Island almost three years ago, was unreasonable based on the circumstances. Their colleagues in Washington reportedly thought the record contained enough evidence to proceed.
At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in November 2015, Sessions, a senior member of the panel, called the Black Lives Matter movement, which campaigns to end anti-black racism and police abuses, “really radical” and said that “police officers all over America are concerned” about legal actions by the Justice Department against police departments and officers.
As attorney general, Sessions will inherit DOJ’s oversight of agreements with the cities of Chicago, Cleveland and Baltimore that commit police in each of those cities to refrain from unconstitutional stops, searches and arrests of African-Americans, as well as from using excessive force. In an introduction to a paper published in 2008 by the Alabama Police Institute, Sessions denounced the use of such agreements as “an end run around the democratic process.”
According to Ames Grawert, counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice, Sessions’ comments “call into question” whether he would continue the department’s probes intro police practices.
Sessions also will be charged with implementing the criminal justice agenda of the president-elect, who campaigned on a platform of law and order. Though Sessions pushed for passage of a 2010 law that reduced the disparity in sentences between crimes for crack and powder cocaine, he has opposed reform of federal sentencing laws despite bipartisan support for ending mass incarceration without compromising public safety.
Pantaleo and his partner arrested Garner, a father of six, for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. Video from a cellphone camera recorded the encounter, which ended with Garner telling the officers 11 times he could not breathe as they pinned him to the ground.
In a letter last Tuesday to Lynch, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn and five of his fellow New York-area lawmakers called on the attorney general to prosecute Pantaleo. “In approximately two weeks, there will be a new DOJ less committed to civil rights enforcement,” they wrote. “Consequently, the investigation into Mr. Gamer’s death may itself be suffocated and die.”