New York Police Sergeant to Face Internal Charges in Eric Garner Confrontation
By AL BAKERJAN. 8, 2016
A New York City police sergeant
was served with departmental disciplinary charges on Friday for her role in the
confrontation that led to the death of Eric Garner in 2014.
The sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, was
one of two Police Department supervisors to initially respond to the scene of
the encounter. The charges are the first official accusations of misconduct
against any of the officers involved in the case.
Mr. Garner, 43, died after being
grabbed from behind by one officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who threw an arm around
Mr. Garner’s neck as he and several colleagues tried to arrest him on suspicion
of selling loose cigarettes.
The death of Mr. Garner, which
the Justice Department is investigating, illuminated the aggressive tactics
employed by officersin New York when confronting people suspected of minor
offenses. Agrand jury’s decision not to charge the officers involved fueled
protests in the city and elsewhere and, along with several other
police-involved deaths around the country, led to calls for criminal-justice
reforms.
Mr. Garner, who was unarmed, died
after repeatedly saying he was having difficulty breathing. Representatives of
his family, civil rights lawyers and others, including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo,
called for changes to the secretive grand jury process.
The Police Department had said
that it was waiting for the results of the federal investigation before
proceeding with its own actions with regard to Mr. Garner’s death. But police
officials were forced to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Sergeant
Adonis because of an 18-month statute of limitations dictated by the state’s
Civil Service law, said Stephen Davis, the department’s chief spokesman. Mr.
Davis said the department had filed the internal charges after consulting with
the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
The statute does not apply to
Officer Pantaleo, Mr. Davis said, because federal authorities were reviewing
his conduct and a “criminal aspect exception applies.” The department has
completed its internal inquiry into Officer Pantaleo, he said.
Sergeant Adonis, 38, joined the
Police Department in 2002. She was assigned to the 120th Precinct on the North
Shore of Staten Island at the time of the confrontation with Mr. Garner, on
July 17, 2014, in the Tompkinsville neighborhood. She had been promoted to
sergeant less than a month earlier, on June 25. Her yearlong probation was
extended by six months last year.
On Friday, she was placed on
modified duty, stripped of her gun and badge, and barred from doing street
enforcement, Mr. Davis said.
Portions of the officers’
encounter with Mr. Garner were caught on video. That footage showed Sergeant
Adonis entering the frame as Officer Pantaleo and his colleagues pressed Mr.
Garner onto the sidewalk after taking him to the ground. A second sergeant,
Dhanan Saminath, arrived, though it is not clear when. He was the anticrime
team supervisor.
The encounter occurred on Bay
Street, outside Bay Beauty Supply. The store manager said he heard the female
sergeant say to the officers, “Let up, you got him already.” An officer looked
up but did not let go, the manager said.
At a news conference on Friday,
Sergeant Adonis stood silently with Edward D. Mullins, the head of the
sergeants’ union, as he criticized Police Commissioner William J. Bratton,
calling the charges “political pandering” at the expense of an officer with an
“unblemished record.”
In an interview earlier in the
day, Mr. Mullins said: “Commissioner Bratton bears the full responsibility for
what occurred on Staten Island in the Garner case. He was the commissioner in
charge of a policy, a failed policy, that should never have been. And that
policy being the enforcement of untaxed cigarettes. And if anyone should be put
on modified assignment, it should be him.”
Mr. Mullins said the charges
against Sergeant Adonis were four counts of “failure to supervise” the
situation.
“We don’t hear about the duty
captain,” added Mr. Mullins, who said Sergeant Adonis was assigned to be at a
meeting, not on patrol, and responded at her own initiative, at the time of the
confrontation. “We don’t hear about a borough commander, a zone commander.”
As a practical matter, the
internal case against Sergeant Adonis will be delayed until the federal inquiry
is complete. While the deadline for filing internal charges against other
officers has not passed, Mr. Davis said that none beyond Sergeant Adonis were
“subject to department charges in connection with this at this point.”
Ultimately, a departmental judge
will make a recommendation to Mr. Bratton about how to address the sergeant’s
actions. Punishment could involve termination. As commissioner, Mr. Bratton is
the final arbiter.
In November, the state’s highest
court declined to order the release of transcripts from the grand jury that
considered evidence in the death of Mr. Garner.
Christopher T. Dunn, associate
legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, one of the groups that
sought the transcripts, questioned why the federal inquiry was still open. The
matter, he said, is “not a tough call under the federal statute.”
“This is fine and good, but the
much bigger issue is what is happening with Officer Pantaleo,” he said. “There
is ample basis for a federal prosecution, and we see no reason why the Justice
Department needs more time to decide whether to proceed.”
The Justice Department opened its
investigation in December 2014, and it is not unusual for such inquiries to
stretch past a year. Federal law enforcement officials in New York and
Washington said the investigation remained active.
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