The encounter was captured on a video that ricocheted around the world, set off protests and prompted calls for the officers to be fired and criminally charged.
Garner’s death was part of a succession of police killings across the country that became part of a wrenching conversation about how officers treat people in predominantly poor and minority communities.
Now, the officer who wrapped his arm around Garner’s neck, Daniel Pantaleo, 33, faces a public trial that could lead to his firing. Pantaleo has denied wrongdoing and his lawyer argues that he did not apply a chokehold.
The trial, scheduled to start Monday at Police Department headquarters, has been long-awaited by the Garner family, whose campaign to hold the police accountable for what they say is an unjustified use of force took on greater significance after Garner’s daughter, Erica Garner, died in 2017.
The city paid $5.9 million to settle a lawsuit with the family after a grand jury declined to bring criminal charges.
But Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration has fought and delayed the family’s efforts to have all the police officers involved in the encounter punished.
“It was at least a dozen more who just did nothing, or either they pounced on him, they choked him, they filed false reports,” Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, said in an interview. “It’s about all of those officers who committed an injustice that day and they all need to stand accountable.”
Pantaleo faces charges of reckless use of a chokehold and intentional restriction of breathing. His lawyer says that Pantaleo did not use a chokehold, but a different technique that is taught to officers in training and is known as a seatbelt.
So the trial will have to settle two questions at the heart of the case: Was the maneuver Pantaleo used a chokehold? And, if so, was the officer justified in using it to subdue an unarmed man during a low-level arrest?
On Thursday, the Police Department judge overseeing the trial said that prosecutors must prove that Pantaleo’s actions went beyond a violation of departmental rules and constituted a crime — an unusually high bar.
Video of the fatal encounter was recorded by Ramsey Orta, a friend of Garner’s who is expected to testify at Pantaleo’s trial. It captured Garner telling officers in street clothes to leave him alone after they approached him outside a beauty supply store on July 17, 2014, not far from the Staten Island Ferry Terminal.
Garner had repeated encounters with the police and believed that he was being harassed.
“This stops today,” he told the officers before they moved to arrest him over accusations that he was selling untaxed cigarettes. As one officer tried to grab Garner’s hand, he slipped free. Then Pantaleo slid one arm around Garner’s neck and another under his left arm and dragged him to the ground. On the pavement, he begged for air.
The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide and said he died from a chokehold and the compression of his chest from lying prone. The findings are a crucial issue in the trial and Pantaleo’s defense lawyer plans to dispute them.
Stuart London, the police union lawyer representing Pantaleo, said the technique his client used was the seatbelt maneuver taught in the Police Academy, not a chokehold. He plans to argue that Garner, who was overweight and severely asthmatic, died because of poor health.
“Those who have been able to not come to a rushed judgment, but have looked at the video in explicit detail, see Pantaleo’s intent and objective was to take him down pursuant to how he was taught by NYPD, control him when they got on the ground, and then have him cuffed,” London said in an interview. “There was never any intent for him to exert pressure on his neck and choke him out the way the case has been portrayed.”
The Civilian Complaint Review Board, an independent city agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct, is prosecuting the case against Pantaleo and is seeking his termination.
The ruling on Thursday by the judge, Rosemarie Maldonado, the deputy police commissioner in charge of trials, denied London's motion to dismiss the case.But her ruling means that prosecutors need to prove that Pantaleo’s actions rose to the crimes of assault and strangulation in order to avoid the state's prohibition on bringing misconduct charges more than 18 months after occurrence.
Colleen Roache, a spokeswoman for the review board, said prosecutors understood their obligation when they served Pantaleo with the charges last July.
But critics have said the review board's failure to file charges sooner had made the prosecutors' case significantly harder to prove.
The Police Department banned chokeholds in 1993 amid concern about a rising number of civilian deaths in police custody. In 2016, the department added an exception to its chokehold ban under certain circumstances, which critics said made it easier for officers to justify its use.
After Garner’s death, the Police Department spent $35 million to retrain officers not to use chokeholds, but they continue to use the maneuver and rarely face punishment.
The trial is expected to last two weeks, with testimony from about two dozen witnesses. Pantaleo has not decided whether he will testify, London said.
When the trial ends, Maldonado, will decide if Pantaleo is guilty. If guilt is determined, she will recommend a penalty to Police Commissioner James P. O’Neill, who will make the final decision.
Short of firing, any discipline of Pantaleo, a 13-year veteran, may never become public because of a state law that shields police disciplinary records from public disclosure.
The delays and secrecy surrounding officer discipline are part of the reason that police reform advocates say the public has lost trust in the city’s process for assessing complaints against officers.
The de Blasio administration fought to keep prior abuse complaints against Pantaleo secret, including one stemming from a car stop in which the occupants said he strip-searched them on the street.
The records were eventually leaked, but the administration won several court rulings broadening the scope of the secrecy law.
“It’s been de Blasio and his administration who’ve been blocking the whole time that I’ve been trying to get the officers fired,” Carr said.
The trial will revisit a painful chapter marked by months of protests with marchers chanting Garner’s final words.
Not long after a Staten Island grand jury in December 2014 decided not to charge Pantaleo with a crime, two officers were ambushed and killed by a gunman while sitting in their patrol car.
To Garner’s family and their supporters, his death discredited a crime-fighting strategy that the police and mayors have cited repeatedly as helping to drive crime rates to their lowest level in recent history. The strategy relies on targeting lower-level offenses that the police believe create the environment for more violent crime.
But critics say it has resulted in racial profiling, targeting mostly black and Latino men in poorer neighborhoods.
The Police Department delayed disciplinary proceedings against Pantaleo for years because of an ongoing federal investigation. But with prosecutors in the Department of Justice divided over whether to bring charges, police officials decided to allow the disciplinary process to move forward.
Pantaleo and Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, who was the first supervisor to arrive on the scene where the police were confronting Garner, were stripped of their guns and placed on desk jobs. Adonis, who has since been restored to full duty, has been administratively charged with failing to properly oversee officers, but a date for her disciplinary trial has not been set.
A state judge recently denied Pantaleo’s motion to have the civilian review board removed from the case. He argued that the agency lacked jurisdiction because the person who filed the complaint was not involved or an eyewitness.
“It’s time for Eric Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, the rest of the Garner family, and the people of the City of New York to have closure,” Fred Davie, the chairman of the civilian review board, said in a statement.
On the stretch of Bay Street where Garner died, the type of behavior that drew police attention five years ago persists. People peddle loose cigarettes and a sign affixed to a door outside an apartment building warns against selling heroin on a stoop.
“It’s a hustle block,” Christopher Sweat, a retired chef, said. “It’s a regular mood until the cops get called.”
Nearby, a plaque memorializes Garner’s death as a murder, adding, “May his soul rest in peace.” Passers-by on a recent afternoon were unanimous in their belief that Pantaleo deserved to be fired.
“It was a blatant chokehold,” said Keenen Hill, 46, a maintenance man who lives in the neighborhood. “Stevie Wonder saw that.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.