Pantaleo’s Firing, Not Nearly Enough…

Any New Yorker who kills anoth­er unlaw­ful­ly, goes to prison. Not pros­e­cut­ing and con­vict­ing this mur­der­er, sends a strong mes­sage that cops are above the laws.

The New York City police com­mis­sion­er James O’Neill has final­ly fired mur­der­ous cop, Daniel Pantaleo who choked the life out of Eric Garner more than five years ago.
“The unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of Eric Garner’s death must have con­se­quences of its own,” O’Neill said at a news con­fer­ence at police head­quar­ters in Lower Manhattan. “It is clear that Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effec­tive­ly serve as a New York City police offi­cer.”
“Mr. Garner was somebody’s son, somebody’s dad. Everyone in the NYPD under­stands that,” O’Neill said. “He should have decid­ed against resist­ing arrest, but a man with a fam­i­ly lost his life and that is an irre­sistible tragedy.” Said O’Neill.

Here is the thing, every per­son being arrest­ed has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­mit to the arrest and fight the case in court if he or she so choses, even if he or she believes whole­heart­ed­ly, that the arrest is wrong or unwar­rant­ed.
However, resist­ing arrest is not a crime pun­ish­able by death. Even if New York City and the State decid­ed to make resist­ing arrest a death penal­ty offense, I doubt seri­ous­ly that the police would have the right to exe­cute offend­ers on the spot.
That is what makes the actions of Daniel Pantaleo’s actions so egregious.

A fir­ing is not ade­quate redress for a bla­tant mur­der. Regardless of who you are, mur­der is mur­der. Police offi­cers must be held to high­er stan­dards, they are giv­en the pow­er of life and death over cit­i­zens. We must hold them to stricter stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty. As a for­mer police offi­cer I total­ly under­stand a cop mak­ing the wrong call in a split sec­ond sit­u­a­tion in which he thought his or some­one else’s life is in dan­ger.
This was dif­fer­ent, Daniel Pantaleo lit­er­al­ly choked the life out of a man who kept telling him and the gang of oth­er cops on to of him ‚“I can’t breathe”.
The police per­sist­ed in pil­ing on. Pantaleo nev­er relaxed his hold on the dying mans neck until he stopped breath­ing.
He mur­dered Eric Garner with cal­lous and bla­tant dis­re­gard for human life.
The respond­ing EMT techi­cians who arrived on the scene did noth­ing to aid mis­ter Garner. They were alleged­ly fired. 

DONOVAN’S COMPLICITY

Other than the oth­er cops who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the lynch­ing of mis­ter Garner, The then Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan used his office to make absolute­ly sure that Pantaleo did not face jus­tice.
As the Huffingtonpost) point­ed out since the case occurred: In con­trast to the action of the Ferguson, Missouri pros­e­cu­tor in releas­ing all of the secret grand jury tes­ti­mo­ny in the police killing of Michael Brown, Staten Island District Attorney, Daniel Donovan (and now Congressman), on a motion by the NAACP, adamant­ly refused to make pub­lic any of the evi­dence he placed before the grand jury, or the rea­sons for giv­ing police wit­ness­es immu­ni­ty, shield­ing him­self under the cov­er of grand jury secre­cy.
Since then Donovan has been boot­ed out of the Congress by the vot­ers in Staten Island.
A NYPD judge rec­om­mend­ed fir­ing Pantaleo for using the banned choke­hold he did.
Incredibly, the much vaunt­ed Federal author­i­ties, under Trump’s Attorney General William Barr also failed to indict a sin­gle cop, even though the world wit­nessed the mur­der com­mit­ted in front of our eyes.
No doubt that deci­sion was tak­en by Barr who is well know to have said he has a zero tol­er­ance for any­one who resist police.
It seems clear that Under William Barrs Justice Department, peo­ple who resist cops aggres­sion, are fair game to become sta­tis­tics of police homicide.