All Pantaleo wants is to be treated fairly. Politics should never replace the rule of law
By Shawn Cohen and Bob Fredericks
New York Post
November 11, 2016
The NYPD cop involved in the chokehold death of Eric Garner is hopeful the Trump Administration will pull the plug on the feds’ renewed effort to bring civil rights charges against him, his lawyer told The Post.
Officer Daniel Pantaleo is “cautiously optimistic” that Trump will reverse Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s decision to assign new prosecutors from Washington DC to the case, said the lawyer, Stuart London.
“I discussed the election results with him and he is cautiously optimistic. I am cautiously optimistic that, under the new administration, that the recommendations of the Eastern District that there is no civil rights case would be accepted by Justice, and that Pantaleo can then move forward with his life,”said London, who represents Pantaleo on behalf of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association.
“All Pantaleo wants is to be treated fairly. Politics should never replace the rule of law.”
The 31-year-old officer has been twisting in the wind since the July 2014 incident on State Island, and has already been through the ringer of a pair of probes, both of which exonerated him.
He’s been assigned to desk duty — although he still managed to earn $120,000 in 2015.
Critics have called Lynch’s motives purely political after both a Staten Island grand jury and the Brooklyn federal prosecutors ruled that Pantaleo should not be charged in Garner’s death.
An autopsy concluded that Garner was the victim of a homicide and died as a result of a chokehold as well as other underlying medical conditions.
Pantaleo and other cops had rousted Garner after merchants complained to the cops about him selling untaxed loose cigarettes — hurting their own sales.
“It’s [the renewed probe] a terrible injustice. He was exonerated by a Staten Island grand jury, and the Eastern District of New York, which is a very tough district,” Rep. Pete King (R-Nassau) said on Friday.
“Whatever this was it was not racial, he was ordered to stop people from selling loose cigarettes after business owners complained by [former] Chief [of Department Philip] Banks, the highest ranked African-American officer in the department. It was a tragic outcome but it wasn’t racial,” he said, adding that he would “fully support” Trump if he reined in Justice.
Lynch announced last month that she had assigned a new set of prosecutors to the case — a move hailed by Mayor de Blasio but decried by cops and their supporters.
“Washington wants to indict him,” one law enforcement insider recently told The Post.
Lynch launched the original federal investigation into the Garner case when she was still the US Attorney for the Eastern District in Brooklyn.
As attorney general, she replaced the Brooklyn probers with DC investigators last month because no indictment had been brought against Pantaleo.
The PBA has called the Justice Department’s actions a “fishing expedition.”
Pantaleo and fellow officers had clashed with Garner, on a Staten Island street. Pantaleo put Garner in a chokehold banned by the NYPD and wrestled him to the ground.
Garner, who was black, pleaded with Pantaleo, who is white, to release him, saying, “I can’t breathe.”
The incident was caught on video, sparking nationwide protests by the Black Lives Matter movement and others.
Justice, under the Obama administration and the country’s first two black attorneys general, has investigated roughly two dozen police departments for civil rights violations.
1 comment:
I hope they drop it too.
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