Judicial inquiry into NYC officials’ role in Eric Garner’s police chokehold death to begin mid-July
A judicial inquiry into city officials’ role in the police chokehold death of Eric Garner — and what his family has described as a subsequent cover-up — is slated to begin in mid-July, a Manhattan judge said Tuesday.
At a video-conference hearing, State Supreme Court Justice Erika Edwards told lawyers for the city, Garner’s family and police reform advocates to clear their calendars the week of July 15 for the inquiry, which would come nearly seven years to the day his death on a Staten Island sidewalk helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement.
“I want it to start this summer, I don’t want to go into September,” said Judge Edwards. “As far as I’m concerned, I want this done.”
Gwen Carr and Elisha Flagg-Garner, Garner’s mother and sister, joined by a group of racial justice advocates, filed a petition in 2019 seeking a judicial inquiry into Garner’s death.
The inquiry, transcripts of which will be made public, is expected to scrutinize the circumstances of Garner’s arrest, police use of force, an alleged lack of medical care provided to him at the scene, leaks to the media about the slain Staten Island man’s brushes with the criminal legal system, and more.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and former NYPD Police Commissioner James O’Neill could be forced to testify as witnesses.
The petitioners have demanded transparency into arrest tactics used by police officers other than ex-NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo, who applied the fatal chokehold but was never criminally charged in the encounter.
Garner, a father of five, was unarmed when he died during an arrest on July 17, 2014 for allegedly selling untaxed cigarettes. A video captured Garner pleading “I can’t breathe” before his death — words that would become a rallying cry for anti-police brutality protesters.
Pantaleo was the only officer to lose his job over the fatal incident. An NYPD sergeant was docked 20 vacation days for failure to supervise the officers on the scene.
A summary judicial inquiry is allowed under a rarely-cited section of the city charter that permits the public to demand a judicial inquest into possible violations or neglect carried out by public officials.
“We have to really narrow the scope of all of the questioning. This is unusual for me, you know. So I’m learning as well as a judge, and it’s not like I can go phone a friend,” Edwards said at the hearing.
The judge added the case is a priority but that she doesn’t want it to go on “for weeks.”
“The way I do it is we go straight until we’re done,” she said.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the de Blasio administration and the NYPD are trying to have the case thrown out entirely in an appeal before the Appellate Division, First Department, who denied a request from the city on March 23 to halt all proceedings while the appeals court mulls its ultimate decision.
