A New York City police officer involved in the arrest of a man who died in custody after being placed in an apparent choke hold has been stripped of his gun and badge and placed on desk duty, police said on Saturday.
Officer Daniel Pantaleo, an eight-year New York Police Department (NYPD) veteran, and an officer who has been with the force for four years were both taken off the street after the death on Thursday of 43-year-old Eric Garner on Staten Island, a borough south of Manhattan, police said.
The department would not identify the second officer, but said he would retain his gun and badge while on desk duty. The reassignment is effective immediately and will remain in effect while Garner’s death is being investigated, police said.
The president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, the city’s largest police union, called Pantaleo’s reassignment “completely unwarranted.”
The decision, Patrick Lynch said in a statement, “effectively pre-judges” the case and denies Pantaleo the “very benefit of a doubt that has long been part of the social contract that allows police officers to face the risks of this difficult and complex job.”
The department disclosed Pantaleo’s reassignment hours after Garner’s wife, Esaw, burst into tears at a rally in Manhattan’s Harlem neighborhood, where civil rights activist the Reverend Al Sharpton said his death could strain the black community’s relationship with the police department.
“This is going to be a real test to see where policies are in the city now and whether the change that we feel occurred has occurred,” Sharpton said, referring to promises made by New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and Bratton to improve the relationship between officers and the city’s minority communities.
The NYPD has faced criticism and legal challenges over its use of the stop and frisk tactic, which allows officers to stop anyone they suspect is about to commit a crime or has committed a crime. There has also been an outcry over the NPYD’s extensive surveillance of Muslims disclosed in stories by The Associated Press.
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg vehemently defended both the surveillance and stop and frisk as legal and vital public safety tools.
According to federal court records, three men have sued Pantaleo within the past two years over what they argued were unlawful, racially motivated arrests on Staten Island.
In the first lawsuit, settled by the city in January, two black men in their 40s accused Pantaleo and other officers of arresting them without cause and subjecting them to a “humiliating and unlawful strip search” on a street that involved ordering them to “pull their pants and underwear down, squat and cough.”
The men said they were held overnight on charges that were ultimately dismissed seven months later.
In a second lawsuit, a man accused Pantaleo and other officers of misrepresenting facts in a police report and other documents to substantiate charges that were eventually dismissed.
Pantaleo did not immediately return a telephone message seeking comment.
Garner, who has been arrested for selling illegal cigarettes numerous times in recent years, told the officers who confronted him on Thursday that he had not done anything wrong, according to the video of the arrest.
“Every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I’m tired of it. It stops today,” Garner shouts. “I’m minding my business. Please just leave me alone.”
As four officers bring him down, Garner is heard gasping: “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”
The video shows one officer using his hands to push Garner’s face into the sidewalk.
Prosecutors and internal affairs detectives are investigating the death of the father of six and grandfather of two; authorities believe he suffered a heart attack.
De Blasio has called the circumstances of his death “very troubling.”
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