NYC pays Eric Garner family $6 million for his murder, but not a single person held accountable
Almost exactly one year ago to this day, on July 17, 2014, a New York Police Department officer choked Eric Garner to death on a Staten Island sidewalk. Now on Monday, it was revealed that Garner’s family received a $5.9 million dollar wrongful death settlement from the taxpayers of New York City. His family deserved this settlement, but it still rings hollow.
If Garner’s death was a $6 million mistake by the NYPD, why has no single person been held responsible? Officer Daniel Pantaleo applied illegal force to choke Garner that day and refused to let it go in spite of Garner’s persistent pleas.
The logic in this settlement, like the logic in countless similar police brutality settlements before it, makes zero sense. Either officers made mistakes and broke laws and should be fired or sent to jail—in which case a $6 million settlement makes sense—or officers didn’t make mistakes or break laws, as the NYPD and the district attorney appears to have concluded, and this settlement makes no sense whatsoever.
It’s illogical that Pantaleo, who applied the chokehold on Garner and has been sued for misconduct before, still has his job and never even faced a trial, but the city admits it was responsible for the wrongful death of this man.
In other words, New York City is perfectly willing to foot the bill for the brutality and murder committed by its police, but pretty much refuses to hold anyone accountable. So much so that New York City has paid over $1 billion in police misconduct settlements in the past 10 years alone, with another $1 billion from the previous 10 years.
Chicago isn’t far behind. Struggling to pay its basic bills and shutting schools down across the city, Chicago has paid over $500 million in police misconduct settlements with almost no officers involved in those settlements held responsible in any serious fashion.
Ultimately, they don’t care as long as they can pay their problems away
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