Justice for Eric Garner? Not even close | By Errol Louis for CNNOpinion
Errol Louis is the host of"Inside City Hall," a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.
The agonizing, unnecessary, five-year wait before the New York Police Department finally fired Daniel Pantaleo -- the cop accused of fatally choking Eric Garner with an illegal chokehold, horrifyingly captured on video in 2014 -- illustrates how hard it will be to truly reform police tactics in New York and elsewhere around the country.
Errol Louis"Today, we have finally seen justice done," Mayor Bill de Blasio said after his police commissioner James P. O'Neill announced at a news conference Monday that he was terminating Pantaleo. Justice? Not even close. De Blasio and the NYPD always had the option of initiating disciplinary action against Pantaleo, but failed to do so.
Eric Garner's daughter: 'We will continue to fight' 01:40In the meantime, the weeks and months ticked by. Garner's 27-year-old daughter died while waiting for justice, and so did his stepfather. Mayor de Blasio meanwhile remained stubbornly silent about the case, refusing to even express an opinion about whether Pantaleo should remain on the force, for fear of prejudicing the outcome of an internal departmental trial.
De Blasio: Justice has been done 01:05The bottom line is this: a cop killed an unarmed father using a chokehold that was expressly prohibited by the NYPD 20 years before Garner's death and remains banned, according to the NYPD Patrol Guide. .But the NYPD has been lax about enforcing its own rule.
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