*Daniel Pantaleo, the NYC police officer who applied the chokehold on Eric Garner has been suspended by the department, it has just been announced.
The news of Pantaleo’s suspension follows the announcement on Friday that a departmental administrative judge officially recommended that the officer be terminated as a result of his controversial involvement with Garner’s death, according to a source with direct knowledge of the decision, reports CNN.
Pantaleo’s suspension is just a stop-gap because it is expected that NYPD Police Commissioner James O’Neill will follow the recommendation made by Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado, a senior law enforcement official said.
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Here’s more via CNN:
Maldonado’s much-awaited recommendation marks the latest internal step in a process that will resolve Pantaleo’s future with the NYPD. Officials with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city agency charged with police oversight, and Pantaleo’s attorney now have about two weeks to draft responses. O’Neill gets the final say.
Maldonado’s recommendation results from a spring disciplinary trial in which Pantaleo declined to take the stand to explain his role in Garner’s death in July 2014. A key question in the case remains whether Pantaleo used a chokehold, which is banned by the NYPD, against Garner. The officer denies he used the maneuver and has been on desk duty since Garner’s death.
Maldonado’s decision comes just weeks after Attorney General William Barr declined to bring federal charges against Pantaleo. His job with NYPD also took center stage during Wednesday night’s Democratic primary debate, as protesters screamed, “Fire Pantaleo!” while New York Mayor Bill de Blasio shared the stage with other candidates for president.
“There’s going to be justice. I have confidence in that,” de Blasio said during the debate, adding that Pantaleo’s professional fate should be decided within the next 30 days. “For the first time, we are not waiting on the federal Justice Department, which told the city of New York that we could not proceed because the Justice Department was pursuing their prosecution.”
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Meanwhile, on Friday, Garner’s widow called the handling of the case by de Blasio and city officials “very disheartening and very callus.”
“They’re just passing the buck. One is blaming the other — whose responsibility is it, you know, who has the power to do this or do that,” Esaw Garner Snipes told CNN before Maldonado’s decision was publicly revealed.
Pantaleo “should have been fired right on the spot. I think he should have been fired until the investigation was done. I think he should have been fired, you know, even while the investigation was going on. You know, he was still getting paid, he was getting … paid and advances, everything that a regular cop would get but being on the beat. The only thing they did was so-called keep him off the street.”
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