- Wed Dec 03, 2014 4:50 pm
#50332
NYPD officer in Eric Garner chokehold death not indicted by Staten Island grand jury
‘Oh my God, are you serious?’ Garner’s widow, Esaw Garner, told The Daily News about the grand jury’s decision not to charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo. ‘You can see in the video that he (the cop) was dead wrong!’ There had been warnings earlier that a decision not to indict the white policeman with a crime for killing a black man would fan tensions.
Mayor de Blasio said he spoke with Attorney General Eric Holder and that the Justice Department will be pushing ahead with their own probe of Pantaleo’s actions and promise they will not the black man's death go unchecked.
* President Obama also weighed-in on the Staten Island tragedy after consulting with Holder.
“This is an issue we've been dealing with for too long and it’s time for us to make more progress than we've made,” he said. “We're seeing too many incidences where people do not have confidence that folks are being treated fairly. When anybody in the country is not being treated equally under the law, it is my job as president to solve it. I promise the Grand Jury's decision is not the end, it's just the start, these killings of blacks will be stopped, people have had enough, now it's time for action.”
