A police commander in Staten Island received text messages from one of his officers in July 2014, informing him that a man identified as Eric Garner had been arrested, and was “most likely DOA” after he had been wrestled to the ground.
“Not a big deal,” the lieutenant replied. “We were effecting a lawful arrest.”
Audible gasps were heard as the texts were read aloud on Thursday during a police disciplinary hearing for Officer Daniel Pantaleo. He is accused of recklessly using a chokehold that led to Mr. Garner’s death after he was detained on the suspicion that he was selling untaxed cigarettes.
The texts and testimony provided unsettling new details in one of the most wrenching cases of suspected police misconduct in New York.
Mr. Garner’s dying words “I can’t breathe” — repeated 11 times — set off protests around the country and became a powerful slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement.
The texts between the commander, Lt. Christopher Bannon, and the officer, Sgt. Dhanan Saminath, were revealed for the first time on the fourth day of the hearing for Officer Pantaleo, who faces possible termination.
He has never faced criminal charges. A grand jury on Staten Island declined to indict Officer Pantaleo in 2014. A federal civil rights inquiry has dragged on for years without charges being filed. The statute of limitations expires on July 17, the fifth anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death.
An independent police watchdog agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, brought the current charges against Officer Pantaleo, which resulted in this week’s hearing.
The evidence at the hearing picked up events from the Police Department’s perspective while Mr. Garner — who was at least 6 feet 3 inches tall and had asthma so severe that he quit his job — was lying motionless on the ground on Bay Street near the Staten Island Ferry.
The communications started with Sergeant Saminath messaging Lieutenant Bannon and telling him that Mr. Garner had been wrestled to the ground and then adding, “He’s most likely DOA,” using the acronym for dead on arrival. “He has no pulse,” Sergeant Saminath wrote.
After acknowledging the message, Lieutenant Bannon wrote his follow-up note, now linking “Not a big deal” with “I can’t breathe” as the two defining quotations from Mr. Garner’s death.
“No big deal?” Gwen Carr, Mr. Garner’s mother, angrily told reporters outside the Police Department’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan, where the hearing was held. “If one of his loved ones was on the ground dead and someone came up to him and said, ‘It’s no big deal,’ how would you feel about it?”
During Monday’s testimony, the supervisor who oversaw the police’s internal review, Deputy Inspector Charles Barton, said that in 2015 he ordered the lead investigator to recommend disciplinary charges against Officer Pantaleo. But the department’s internal prosecution unit never filed charges.
The medical examiner who performed an autopsy on Mr. Garner testified on Wednesday that the chokehold “set into motion a lethal sequence” that led to the asthma attack that killed him.
Officer Pantaleo’s lawyer, Stuart London, said that his client used an approved maneuver, a “seatbelt hold,” that the police had been trained to use in incidents where people act violently or are resisting arrest.
But the commanding officer of the police academy, Deputy Inspector Richard Dee, testified on Tuesday that Officer Pantaleo’s actions meet “the definition of a chokehold.” He added that the seatbelt maneuver was neither taught nor approved by the department in 2006, when Officer Pantaleo went through the academy, or in 2008, when he received training to become a plainclothes officer.
Mr. London said this week that his client had been a “scapegoat” and added that Mr. Garner was in poor health and that he “set these factors in motion by resisting arrest.”
Mr. London used the testimony of Lieutenant Bannon, Sergeant Saminath and two other officers who were involved in the arrest to try to establish that his client was an exemplary officer and that Mr. Garner had been resisting arrest.
But the introduction of the text messages under cross-examination by prosecutors from the Civilian Complaint Review Board seemed to damage the defense’s case.
Lieutenant Bannon was pressed by one prosecutor, Suzanne O’Hare, to explain his text message.
“My reasoning,” he said, “was not to be malicious. It’s to make sure the officer knew he was put in a bad situation.”
“Would you agree that Eric Garner was put in a bad situation?” Ms. O’Hare asked.
Lieutenant Bannon hesitated for several seconds. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he said.
The testimony on Thursday also focused on the low-level “quality of life” enforcement that the police were conducting in the weeks before Mr. Garner’s death. Mr. Garner was arrested three times during that crackdown, the final one on the day he died.
“The arrest of Eric Garner was the result of a chain of decisions originating at the very highest levels of the N.Y.P.D.,” Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, said after the hearing. “Police officers who enforce quality of life offenses are not cowboys or free agents — they follow the direction of their supervisors, who are in turn responding to complaints from the community.”
Officer Pantaleo’s supervisors testified that they considered him an outstanding worker.
“On a scale of zero to five, he was a 5.0,” Lieutenant Bannon said, adding that “Officer Pantaleo was one of the best officers I’ve supervised.”
But after the hearing, Ms. Carr reminded reporters about Officer Pantaleo’s disciplinary record, which was leaked to the news media and showed that he had several complaints filed against him.
“Look at the misconduct on his record,” Ms. Carr said. “Good workers don’t do illegal arrests; good workers don’t choke people to death.”
The text messages exchanged between Lieutenant Bannon and Sergeant Saminath represented some of the first communications within the Police Department’s command structure about how this arrest ultimately resulted in Mr. Garner’s death.
At 4:11 p.m. Sergeant Saminath sent a text to Lieutenant Bannon telling him that the enforcement effort in Tompkinsville Park had taken a turn for the worse.
“Danny and Justin went to collar Eric Garner and he resisted. When they took him down, Eric went into cardiac arrest. He’s unconscious. Might be DOA,” Sergeant Saminath wrote.
“For the smokes?” Lieutenant Bannon responded.
“Yeah, they observed him selling,” Sergeant Saminath replied. “Then Danny tried to grab him. They both went down. They called the bus ASAP. He’s most likely DOA. He has no pulse.”
“O.K., keep me posted. I’m still here,” Lieutenant Bannon wrote. Then he sent his next message, assuring Sergeant Saminath that it was “not a big deal.”
While Lieutenant Bannon’s reaction upset Mr. Garner’s family and supporters, he will not likely face any disciplinary action, according to the police. Too much time has elapsed since he sent the text for administrative charges to be filed.
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