Sign the Care2 petition below urging NYPD Commissioner William J. Bratton to fire Officer Daniel Pantaleo for placing Eric Garner in an illegal choke-hold, ignoring cries for air, and ending Garner’s life.
The Care2 petition states, “In July 2014, a video surfaced online of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo putting unarmed Eric Garner into a choke hold that killed him. The NYPD outlawed choke holds two decades ago, but a Staten Island grand jury has failed to indict the officer on any charges, and the officer has been placed on leave from the NYPD. The man who filmed the incident, however, has been arrested on weapons charges.”
While some Police Officers go their entire careers without garnering a single civilian complaint, Officer Daniel Pantaleo is not one of them. He has been sued three times before for various incidents.
Andrew Soergel of U.S. News and World Report writes,
Garner’s death is tied to what undoubtedly is Pantaleo’s most publicized misconduct charge, but it was not his first time being accused. Two men filed a complaint against Pantaleo with the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board back in 2012, alleging the officer “slapped” and “tapped” their testicles in a strip-search conducted following a traffic stop, according to the New York Daily News.
Darren Collins and Tommy Rice said Pantaleo and a group of three other plainclothes police officers pulled them over around 10:50 a.m. on March 22, 2012. Pantaleo said he had been radioed by another officer about a drug transaction he had seen involving the men, but that officer denied witnessing such an event to the review board.
…Rice and Collins in 2013 sued Pantaleo and other officers involved in the stop for conducting “humiliating and unlawful strip searches in public view,” according to USA Today. The lawsuit eventually was settled, with Rice and Collins reportedly taking home $15,000 each in the settlement, according to the Daily News.
…Another man, Rylawn Walker, said in a federal lawsuit that he was falsely arrested for marijuana possession in February 2012 by Pantaleo and a group of fellow officers in Staten Island. Walker’s lawsuit claims he “was committing no crime at [the time of the arrest] and was not acting in a suspicious manner,” according to USA Today.
Walker’s suit alleges Pantaleo “misrepresented facts in the police reports and other documents that the plaintiff had committed offenses when in fact this was not true,” according to the Staten Island Advance…”
Enough is enough. The people of New York City have spent enough of their tax dollars settling Pantaleo’s lawsuits. He is unfit to “protect and serve” and must be fired before his inappropriate actions cause more harm – or worse.
Please sign the petition asking the NYPD to fire the officer who killed Eric Garner!
