The Crime and the Cover-Up
I talked on election night with Ben Max and Chrissy Greer about New York City's election results on FAQ NYC, and wrote a column for the Daily News about what the city and the NYPD still don't want to account for in what may have been the most famous police killing in the history of the world:
De Blasio, the crime and the coverup: The mayor tried to stonewall the Eric Garner public inquiry, but the terrible truth came out
Filing paperwork to set up a run for governor in the midst of the judicial inquiry into the NYPD’s killing of Eric Garner on his watch as mayor just might be peak Bill de Blasio.
What gall.
After hiding behind the feds and flimsy process excuses for five years while the officer whose chokehold killed Garner in 2014 kept drawing his NYPD salary, de Blasio proclaimed when Daniel Pantaleo was finally fired following his conviction at an administrative trial in 2019 that losing one bad apple amounted to “justice done” and the barrel saved.
It was, the mayor said again and again, “the end of the line for all of this” — just in time for his pathetic presidential run.
Having declared that “we’ve got to turn the page here,” his administration fought in the courts to try and stop this judicial inquiry, the first in more than a century under a rarely used provision in the City Charter.
That “sunlight” law allows members of the public — in this case, a group including Garner’s mother and sister and members of Communities United for Police Reform, represented by attorneys including Manhattan District Attorney-elect Alvin Bragg — to look into “violations of duty and neglect of duty” by New York City public officials.
Speaking of neglect, after failing to stop the inquiry—that can’t lead to charges or anything else other than the creation of an overdue public record—de Blasio did his best to ignore it as it was held over Zoom.
He got a big assist from state Supreme Court Justice Erika Edwards’ unfortunate ruling that the mayor and other top City Hall and NYPD officials would not have to appear, even as lower-ranking officials with remarkably limited memories kept testifying about how the big decisions — over who to investigate or charge (and mostly who not to) for their actions, including filing false paperwork about Garner and leaking his arrest history and medical records — were above their pay grades.
At the inquiry, Officer Justin D’Amico recounted how he’d spotted Garner, who he and Pantaleo had both arrested before, selling loosies — from about 350 feet away. It was eagle-eyed D’Amico who made the call to arrest Garner (who in fact had just broken up a fight), telling him they could do this “the easy way” or “the hard way” just before Pantaleo took him down. Despite being inches from Garner, D’Amico has claimed that he didn’t hear the dying man say “I can’t breathe” all those times.
And it was D’Amico who filed paperwork reporting that no force had been used during the fatal arrest, and who found five packs with Virginia tax stamps in Garner’s pockets before charging the dead man with a felony for selling at least 10,000 cigarettes.
“Due to the circumstances, I wasn’t thinking clearly,” he testified. “That was a total mistake.”
That’s his ridiculous story, and he’s sticking with it. At least now it’s finally a matter of public record.
D’Amico is still a NYPD officer, who received no punishment for his role in what may have been the most famous police killing in the history of the world.
“Was there an ill intent on their part to either deceive or create something that wasn’t there? I don’t think so,” said Joseph Reznick, the boss of Internal Affairs and the highest-ranking member of the NYPD to testify at the inquiry. He said the bureau concluded there was “not a false statement” made by D’Amico.
“I don’t work for the mayor. I don’t work for City Hall,” Reznick said in his first-ever public remarks on the topic. “I answer to two people on this job and that’s the police commissioner and the first deputy commissioner. I take no order — I take nothing from any other person.”
But that doesn’t quite align with what former counsel to the mayor, Civilian Complaint Review Board chair and then-mayoral candidate Maya Wiley said in an affidavit, detailing how City Hall was routinely involved in big decisions like this.
The shame of it is that the judicial inquiry concluded after eight days of hearings without testimony from the mayor, the commissioner, their first deputies or other top bosses — and without any closing statement to give context to the testimony that was heard.
“It’s not about de Blasio protecting Pantaleo per se,” says Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform. “It’s about him protecting the NYPD as an institution.”
With the inquiry over with and Mayor de Blasio not far behind, the question soon will be whether or not Mayor Eric Adams and his new commissioner clear out tarnished brass and truly turn the page.
“And it isn’t about low-level officers,” Kang concluded. “It's about how you want to govern a city. You can’t do better if the government is consistently covering up for and protecting the NYPD.”