By Kevin McCoy
NEW YORK – The white New York
City police officer whose choke hold led to the death of an unarmed black man
has been sued three times for allegedly violating the constitutional rights of
other black people that he and fellow cops arrested.
A grand jury decision not to
indict Daniel Pantaleo on Wednesday in the death of Eric Garner, 43, the man he
wrestled to the ground during an attempted arrest for selling untaxed
cigarettes on a Staten Island sidewalk in July, sparked waves of angry though
largely peaceful demonstrations in several cities.
The Garner case wasn't the
first time Pantaleo, 29, was accused of misconduct, however.
Darren Collins and Tommy Rice
alleged in a 2013 federal court lawsuit that Pantaleo and at least four other
officers subjected them to "humiliating and unlawful strip searches in
public view" after handcuffing them during a March 2012 arrest on Staten
Island.
The court complaint charged
that the cops, searching for illegal drugs, "pulled down the plaintiffs'
pants and underwear, and touched and searched their genital areas, or stood by
while this was done in their presence."
Pantaleo and three of the
officers repeated the searches after they took the suspects to Staten Island's
120th police precinct, the complaint alleged.
Charges against Collins and
Rice, who said they had done nothing wrong, ultimately were dismissed and
sealed. The city settled their lawsuit last year, court records show.
Separately, Rylawn Walker
alleged that Pantaleo and other cops falsely arrested him on Staten Island for
alleged marijuana possession in February 2012. His federal lawsuit against the
cops maintained that Walker "was committing no crime at that time and was
not acting in a suspicious manner."
City lawyers have denied the
allegations, and the case is pending.
The marijuana charges against
Walker were dismissed and sealed on a motion by Staten Island prosecutors,
defense lawyer Michael Colihan wrote in an August 2014 letter to U.S. District
Judge Edgardo Ramos.
"To put it mildly, many
police on Staten Island have been playing fast, loose and violently with the
public they seem to have forgotten they are sworn to protect," wrote
Colihan. "After litigating about 200 of these civil rights matters in the
Eastern and Southern Districts of New York since 1977, I have seen no interest
by the managers of the New York City Police Department, or anyone employed by
the city of New York, in doing anything to stop this."
City attorney Daniel Passeser
complained that the defense letter in part was "designed to fan the flames
of anti-police sentiment in the Staten Island community." He
unsuccessfully argued that portions of the letter should be removed from the
court docket.
Kenneth Collins, a 22-year-old
Staten Island man, in November filed a lawsuit alleging that Pantaleo and other
police officers violated his rights during a February 2012 marijuana arrest.
Along with being arrested falsely, he "was subjected to a degrading search
of his private parts and genitals by the defendants," the court complaint
charged.
The drug charges were dismissed
and sealed one day after the arrest, court filings show.
Collins' lawsuit alleged that
the police officers charged him in part in an alleged bid to get overtime pay
while processing legal paperwork and obtain credit from superiors for making
the arrest.
City attorneys have not yet
filed a response to the lawsuit.
Misconduct allegations against
city police officers filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board dropped to
11,501 in 2013, the lowest total in a decade, the agency's data shows. NYPD
currently has approximately 34,500 uniformed officers. The CCRB received 2,739
complaints during the first six months of this year, a 7% increase from the
same period of 2013, the data shows.
