Four years after Eric Garner was killed by an NYPD chokehold, New York City has announced it will be move forward with hearings to determine whether officers violated any departmental policies – drawing a lukewarm reception from activists and Garner’s family.
“I’m tired of the [city’s] delays and playing politics with the murder of my son, and yesterday’s NYPD letter is just another example,” said Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner.
Carr welcomes the disciplinary hearing but wants it to happen sooner than the city is planning and for it to include all the officers who were present (several of which have not been identified) when Garner was killed.
Those officers, Carr said, “did nothing to intervene as my son said he couldn’t breathe 11 times, and other officers tried to cover it up on official reports afterwards”, in a statement released by Communities United for Police Reform.
The Rev Al Sharpton, of the National Action Network (NAN), added in a press conference Monday: “We are glad that this is happening now, but it should have been moved forward a long time ago.”
Garner died in a confrontation with NYPD officers on Staten Island in 2014 after being accused of selling loose cigarettes. Though he was unarmed, NYPD officers used a chokehold maneuver on Garner right before the 43-year-old father became unresponsive. His death was ruled a homicide and his dying words, “I can’t breathe”, became a slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement.
In December 2014, a New York grand jury declined to indict any of the officers involved.
That same year the Department of Justice, then led by Eric Holder, began an investigation into Garner’s death to determine whether it warranted civil rights charges against any of the officers involved. That investigation appears to have been abandoned by the Jeff Sessions-led DoJ, prompting city officials, who had been waiting for a determination from the DoJ, to move on their own.
“Given the extraordinary passage of time since the incident without a final decision on the US DoJ’s criminal investigation, any further delay in moving ahead with our own disciplinary proceedings can no longer be justified,” a letter from the city to the DoJ issued on Monday read. In it, the city said it would proceed at the end of August.
A disciplinary hearing for any of the officers involved with Garner’s death could lead to them being fired or otherwise reprimanded, but it could not lead to criminal charges – thus the tepid reception from Carr, who still holds out hope for criminal proceedings against the officers.
Sharpton said on Monday: “The federal government is still the ones that should be moving on the charges.”
As many as five officers were involved in the incident but so far the city has only indicated that it is considering disciplinary action against two of them, including Daniel Pantaleo, the officer who administered the chokehold.
Sessions’ DoJ has repeatedly signaled an unwillingness to use his department to hold police accountable for excesses and abuses, as the prior administration had done.
Minister Kirsten John Foy, an activist and commentator with NAN, also expressed his frustration at the city’s timing of the announcement. “They found out in April from DoJ they could move forward. It is now July and now they are saying we have to wait until September!” he said.
A DoJ statement said the department had told the city in April that it could move forward with disciplinary proceedings.
In 2015 the city agreed to a $5.9m settlement with Eric Garner’s family, heading off any potential civil litigation.
In a video op-ed for the New York Times published on Sunday, Carr pleaded: “Fire those police officers. Make them stand accountable. This is your last chance for justice.”
A previous version of this article attributed the Rev Al Sharpton’s comments to a press conference on Tuesday; it has been corrected to reflect that they were made on Monday