A judge says that NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo should be fired for his “reckless” use of a banned chokehold—and for lying about it after his victim Eric Garner, an unarmed black man selling cigarettes on the street, died.
The judge, Rosemarie Maldonado, who has recommended that Officer Pantaleo be fired, concluded that he had been “untruthful” during the interview, according to the opinion that grew out of a departmental trial that ended in June. The best things to do in N.Y.C. during the hottest season of the year. This limited-edition newsletter will launch before Memorial Day and run through Labor Day. Judge Maldonado, a deputy commissioner with the Police Department, also found that officers who testified in Officer Pantaleo’s defense were “unhelpful or unreliable.”
A final decision about Officer Pantaleo’s fate rests with the police commissioner, and will come five years after the death of Mr. Garner — who uttered “I can’t breathe” 11 times — first galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement
Pictured here is Eric with his family.
