*We’ve got an update on the Eric Garner case and the news is not good. The bottom line is the Justice Department will NOT bring federal charges against the NYPD officer who killed Garner with a chokehold in 2014.
Needless to say, the decision is disappointing, but it is a long-expected end to a case that had languished for years as various components of the Justice Department disagreed about what to do, reports USA Today.
Not too surprisingly, Trump’s attorney general, William Barr, made the final decision to not seek civil rights charges against Daniel Pantaleo, a Justice Dept. official said.
Garner, a 43-year-old black man, was accused of selling single cigarettes outside a store on Staten Island when Pantaleo attempted to arrest him. Garner gasped, “I can’t breathe,” after Pantaleo and other officers knocked him to the ground with Pantaleo holding him around the head and neck.
Garner died soon after. His last words would become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement whose members have staged demonstrations against alleged use of excessive force by police across the country.
EVEN AFTER HIS DEATH, NIPSEY HUSSLE REMAINS UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR GANG TIES
“We’re here with heavy hearts because the DOJ has failed us,” Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, said Tuesday. “Although we looked for better from them, five years ago my son said ‘I can’t breathe’ 11 times and today we can’t breathe because they have let us down.”
Garner’s cause of death was listed as “compression of neck (chokehold), compression of chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” The officer’s lawyer, Stuart London, and the police union have denied that Pantaleo used a choke-hold maneuver banned by the NYPD.
The city of New York paid a $5.9 million civil settlement to Garner’s family. Pantaleo has been assigned to administrative duty since Garner’s death.
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