Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner James O’Neill say it’s time for the city to move forward after the firing of Officer Daniel Pantaleo.
“Today is a day of reckoning, but can also be a day of reconciliation. We must move forward together as one city,” Commissioner O’Neill said.
But everyone else says the fight isn’t over.
PBA President Pat Lynch said Pantaleo committed no crime by putting Eric Garner in a chokehold 5 years ago. He’s asking officers to take a stand against the mayor and police commissioner.
“We are asking for a no confidence vote in the mayor and the police commissioner of the city of New York,” Lynch said.
Lynch said this wasn’t a fair process and he accuses the mayor of judging the case before all the facts were in. Mayor de Blasio said this brings an end to a painful chapter in the city’s history.
“For the Garner family that has gone through so much agony for so long and has waited this long just to have one trial finally conclude with a decision, I hope today brings some small measure of closure,” de Blasio said.
Gwen Carr, the mother of Garner, is promising to keep fighting. She said other officers who were on the scene the day her son died.
“We're not finished. We have other officers that we have to go after. You have heard the names. We know that the wrong doing that they have done,” Carr said.
Garner’s death was caught on video, showing him repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe.”
A Staten Island grand jury and federal prosecutors in Brooklyn both refused to bring charges. But an NYPD judge recommended that Pantaleo be fired.
Pantaleo announced he’s going to sue Commissioner O’Neill to get his job and his pension back.
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