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ERIC GARNER, 10 YEARS LATER  
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Theodore Hamm
June 28, 2024
Indypendent
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_ A cell phone video of Eric Garner being choked to death by NYPD
police, seen by millions, helped ignite calls for sweeping changes in
policing. Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, is trying to sustain the
national momentum for police reform. _

Gwen Carr speaks to protesters in New York a day after the Department
of Justice announced no federal charges would be filed in the death of
her son, Eric Garner, (Sam van Pykeren)

 

Ten years ago on July 17, Eric Garner struggled to avoid arrest for
the charge of selling untaxed “loosie” cigarettes near the Staten
Island ferry terminal. NYPD plainclothes officer Daniel Pantaleo then
placed the 43-year-old in a chokehold that killed him.

Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe!” became a rallying cry
for the Black Lives Matter movement that erupted in 2014.

In early December of that year, a Staten Island grand jury decided not
to indict Pantaleo, igniting widespread protests against the NYPD and
then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

After a protracted federal investigation also produced no indictment,
the City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board brought charges against
Pantaleo that resulted in his firing by NYPD Commissioner James
O’Neill in August 2019. This added fuel to the cops’ hostility to
de Blasio but did not diminish activists’ ire against the former
mayor — given that it took five years to simply get Pantaleo off the
force. 

But as anyone who watched Ramsey Orta’s viral cell-phone video
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the fatal incident can attest, Pantaleo was not the only officer
involved in Garner’s death. 

Although Garner’s mother Gwen Carr
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the grassroots organization the Justice Committee have
consistently pushed for accountability
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officers involved, no one other than Pantaleo has faced meaningful
disciplinary action. Despite clear negligence at the murder scene and
blatant lies in their initial reports, many of the Garner cops have
since been promoted. 

_The_ _Indypendent_ calculates that since 2014, these same six
officers have received over $7.5 million in salaries (plus overtime)
from the city, an expenditure that increases substantially when
including pensions and health care. 

Let’s review the Garner cops’ handiwork. 

A few months before the Garner killing, NYPD Chief of Department Phil
Banks called attention
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untaxed cigarette sales on Bay Street, near the ferry terminal. Prior
to the mid-July incident, Banks ordered a crackdown. (Banks,
later implicated
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an untaxed liquor racket, is now the most powerful deputy mayor in the
Adams administration.) 

Starting in March 2014, Lt. Christopher Bannon of the 120th Precinct
monitored the Bay Street site for the sale of loosies. Over the next
two months cops arrested Garner twice for the low-level infraction. 

On July 17, Lt. Bannon and Sergeant Dhanan Saminath sent officers
Pantaleo and Justin D’Amico to 200 Bay St. Both Pantaleo and
D’Amico knew Garner from previous encounters. D’Amico told
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investigators that he understood Lt. Bannon’s original directions to
mean “make an arrest if he observed illegal activity.” 

The two officers dubiously explained to the CCRB that on the ride over
to Bay Street, “they did not speak to each other about the
assignment.” Instead, “the only conversation that they had was
about what was on the radio.” The duo parked over 300 feet from 200
Bay Street. From that distance, D’Amico maintained that he saw
Garner make a loosie transaction — whereas Pantaleo said that a car
blocked his view. 

When confronted by the officers, Garner made it clear that he was sick
of being harassed, ominously stating “I’m tired of it. This stops
today.” 

After calling in back-up, Pantaleo initiates the deadly encounter,
choking Garner for about 10 seconds. As Garner asserts “I can’t
breathe” 11 times, Pantaleo presses Garner’s head into the
sidewalk for another few seconds. Even though D’Amico and three
uniformed cops now had Garner in handcuffs, Pantaleo claimed that the
face press was necessary in order to keep Garner “from biting.” 

As Garner lay limp, none of the officers did anything to help him,
with D’Amico later explaining that he thought the victim was
“playing possum.” 

Both Pantaleo and D’Amico later said that they opted not to use
pepper spray because they did not want to douse each other. D’Amico
has also claimed that he never heard Garner say “I can’t
breathe.”

At the scene, Pantaleo repeatedly told Sgt. Saminath that he saw
Garner selling a loosie and that instead of a chokehold, he pulled the
big man down by his shirt. The lying had only just begun. 

In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Sgt. Saminath texted Lt.
Bannon that “Danny [and] Justin went to collar Garner [and] he
resisted. While they were trying to gain control of him he went into
cardiac arrest…Might be doa.” 

“They observed him selling [a loosie],” Saminath’s text further
stated, but after Garner refused to comply, “Danny then tried to
grab him and they both fell down.” 

“Not a big deal,” Lt. Bannon responded to Saminath’s distorted
account, “we were effecting a lawf[ul] arrest.” According
to _Hell Gate_’s Nick Pinto, Bannon’s callous statement caused
“an uproar [[link removed]]”
when it surfaced in the 2019 departmental trial. On the stand, Bannon
claimed that he was simply trying to put his officers’ “mind[s] at
ease,” given that they had experienced a “bad situation.” 

After leaving the crime scene, D’Amico returned to the precinct and
filed false paperwork. In addition to claiming that there had been no
use of force, his arrest report then charged Garner with felony
cigarette sales, meaning he had 10,000 or more. At the 2021 judicial
inquiry into Garner’s death, D’Amico said this was an honest
mistake. “Due to the circumstances, I wasn’t thinking clearly,”
he stated. 

Soon after Ramsey Orta’s cellphone video went viral, PIX
11 reported
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the footage contradicted a police report that quoted both Sgt.
Saminath and Sgt. Kizzy Adonis expressing doubts regarding the
severity of Garner’s condition. Adonis, a Black woman, was charged
by the NYPD with failure to supervise at the scene, eventually losing
20 vacation days. Saminath was not charged. Officers Mark Ramos and
Craig Furlani, who piled on top of Garner and aided in handcuffing
him,_ _faced no penalties. 

As of June 2024, Christopher Bannon is Lt. Commander Detective of the
NYPD’s Central Robbery Division, a high-level unit that operates out
of 1 Police Plaza. Adonis and Saminath remain sergeants with desk
jobs. In the fall of 2022, D’Amico was promoted to detective at the
122nd Precinct on Staten Island’s South Shore. 

In 2023, Bannon added $93k in overtime to his base pay of $150k.
Adonis boosted her $118k salary with $53k, while Saminath bumped up
his same salary with an extra $90k. D’Amico added nearly $50k to his
$104k salary. Ramos and Furlani both retired a few years ago at the
20-year mark. 

For the Garner cops, the case really wasn’t such a big deal, after
all. 

Meanwhile, Gwen Carr, a retired MTA train operator, continues to fight
police brutality. In 2020 she pushed the state legislature to pass the
Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, outlawing the dangerous tactic. Two
years ago, she launched the E.R.I.C. Initiative, a nonprofit that
helps families affected by police violence. 

Carr is also trying to sustain the national momentum for police
reform, which has waned since the 2020 George Floyd protests. This
past spring at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Carr along with
relatives of Floyd and Tyre Nichols, denounced
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lack of commitment by elected leaders. 

“It’s too late for our children,” said Carr. “But we want to
save other children.”

_THE INDYPENDENT is a New York City-based newspaper
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grassroots journalism is made possible by readers like you. Please
consider making a recurring or one-time donation
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* Eric Garner
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* George Floyd
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* police killings
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* criminal justice reform
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