At least two New York City police officers who have ties to the arrest of Eric Garner testified before a federal grand jury in Brooklyn on March 22, suggesting that the Justice Department is continuing to examine whether to charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo with violating Garner’s civil rights during the latter’s arrest on July 17, 2014 for allegedly selling loose cigarettes.
Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, died as the result of a chokehold applied by Pantaleo, the city’s medical examiner determined. DOJ began its investigation after a grand jury on Staten Island declined to indict the officer, touching off protests nationwide.
In December, Attorney General Loretta Lynch moved the probe to Washington from Brooklyn following a disagreement among prosecutors whether they could prove in court the use of force by Pantaleo was unreasonable based on the circumstances.
The status of the inquiry later fell into question when Jeff Sessions succeeded Lynch. Sessions has criticized actions by the Obama administration to end police abuses in minority communities as hostile to law enforcement. On Monday, DOJ asked a federal judge in Baltimore to delay approval of reforms of policing Lynch had negotiated in that city.
According to the Daily News, Sgt. Dhanan Saminath, who arrived at the scene of Garner’s arrest after Pantaleo called for backup, told grand jurors he summoned emergency medical service because Garner was having difficulty breathing. Deputy Inspector Joseph Veneziano, commanding officer of the 120th precinct at the time, reportedly also testified.
Separately, a state appeals court in Manhattan ruled on March 30 that the city cannot release records concerning complaints filed against Pantaleo with the Civilian Complaint Review Board over the decade that preceded Garner’s death, citing risks to the safety of the officer and his family. Justice John Sweeny Jr., writing on behalf of four of his colleagues, said:
“Here, in light of the widespread notoriety of Mr. Garner’s death and Officer Pantaleo’s role therein, and the fact that hostility and threats against Officer Pantaleo have been significant enough to cause NYPD’s Threat Assessment Unit to order around-the-clock protection for him and his family, and notwithstanding the uncertainty of further harassment, we find that the gravity of the threats to Officer Pantaleo’s safety nonetheless demonstrate that disclosure carries a ‘substantial and realistic potential’ for harm, particularly in the form of ‘harassment and reprisals,’ and that nondisclosure of the requested records under [the statute] is warranted.” [citations omitted]
Last summer, the NYPD stopped sharing information about personnel actions involving officers, citing the state’s civil rights law, which permits release of such records by a judge.
The ruling by the Appellate Division overturned a decision by a trial judge who had ordered the release of a summary of the proceedings and came a week after the news site ThinkProgress published at least some of that information, which the site said it had received from an anonymous source who worked for the CCRB.
The information shows Pantaleo, who remains on desk duty, to be the subject of 14 allegations that he had abused his authority, four of which the CCRB substantiated. According to ThinkProgress, about 2% of the NYPD’s roughly 34,500 officers have two or more complaints with substantiated allegations.