Iris, left, and Ramon Baez, second from left, the parents of Anthony Baez, carry a banner as they march with at least 3,000 protesters down Broadway to New York’s City Hall to protest police brutality, Thursday, Oct. 22, 1998.
NEW YORK — The similarities are striking.
Both Anthony Baez and Eric Garner, in their final moments, were put into chokeholds by officers from the New York City Police Department. Both of the cops involved were white, while Baez and Garner were minorities and unarmed. Both men’s deaths set off protests across the city, their names added to a long list of black and Latino men who have died in altercations with police.
But Francis Livoti, the officer who killed Baez, ultimately spent seven years in a federal prison. In December, a Staten Island grand jury decided not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in Garner’s death.
That grand jury decision precipitated several tense weeks in New York. Protesters — organizing around the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter — routinely took to the streets.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, responding to the grand jury decision, recalled how he and his wife had to “literally train” their biracial son, “as families have all over this city for decades,” in how to “take special care in any encounter he has with the police officers who are there to protect him.”
Police unions took umbrage with the mayor’s sentiment. Then, a lone gunman shot and killed two officers inside their patrol car in Brooklyn, further increasing tension between the mayor and the force. After the officers’ deaths, one police union president, Patrick Lynch, said de Blasio had “blood on his hands.”
At both of the officers’ funerals, policemen turned their backs as the mayor spoke.
Meanwhile, the NYPD inspector general recently released a report showing that cops are rarely, if ever, disciplined for using the banned chokehold maneuver.
This Thursday, a judge will hear arguments around whether the grand jury records in Eric Garner’s death should be released to the public. As the hearing — and the potential release of the grand jury documents — will surely reignite the debate over whether Pantaleo should have been indicted, it also pulls into focus the prospect of the federal government stepping in and pressing civil rights charges against Pantaleo.
Amid all the political turmoil and fallout since Garner’s death, his family, as well as many activists, have remained vigilant in demanding that the federal government take action — even as news broke that federal charges are not expected against Darren Wilson, the police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, who fatally shot Michael Brown, another case that triggered outrage across the country.
The Department of Justice did announce in December that it is investigating Garner’s death. However, Cynthia Davis, a spokeswoman for the Garner family, said “that’s not good enough.”
“We’re still seeking justice,” she told HuffPost. “They need to take the case. They need to do more than just look into it.”
“That’s why we’re out there,” she continued. “That’s exactly why we’re protesting. We’re asking for the federal government to step in and take control of this case.”
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On Dec. 13, the Rev. Al Sharpton led 50,000 protesters through the streets of Washington, D.C., demanding that the federal government intervene in prosecutions of police officers facing criminal charges.
Sharpton has previously said that local and state prosecutors are “conflicted” when they have to prosecute officers because they often work so closely with police.
It’s common for the federal government to investigate cases of alleged police brutality. As in Livoti’s case, the DOJ has traditionally acted as a backstop for when state prosecutors fail to bring charges or win convictions against police.
The DOJ is also currently investigating the case of Ramarley Graham, another unarmed black man killed by a while police officer in the Bronx in 2012.
U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch, whose district includes Staten Island, said in a December statement that her office’s investigation into Garner’s death “will be fair and thorough, and it will be conducted as expeditiously as possible.” It’s not yet clear when charges will be brought, if they are at all.
But while investigations into these cases are common, bringing back a federal indictment or conviction against the officers is not.
Lynch — who is currently facing a confirmation hearing in the U.S Senate to be President Barack Obama’s next attorney general — has experience prosecuting cops for civil rights violations. She won a conviction against NYPD Officer Justin Volpe in 1999 for brutalizing and sodomizing a Haitian immigrant named Abner Louima. Volpe was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
But according to Newsday, a look at the last five years of Lynch’s tenure as the U.S attorney for the Eastern District of New York — which covers Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island — shows that her office more often than not declines to bring federal charges in cases involving the police.
Newsday reported in December that Lynch “declined to bring cases when police were accused of criminal violations of federal civil rights 14 out of 16 times,” according to DOJ data provided by the nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
“It’s a harder job for the federal government” to prosecute police cases, Jacobs, the NYU professor, emphasized to HuffPost, because the DOJ has to prove intent, not negligence.
The political fallout in New York since Garner’s death has been large. The New York Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Aid Society, Public Advocate Letitia James and the New York Post have all petitioned to have the Eric Garner grand jury records released, arguing that there’s a compelling public interest in how the grand jury was conducted. Oral arguments are set for Thursday in the case, although it’s unclear when the judge will rule.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, meanwhile, is considering having special prosecutors handle all cases involving the police. He announced in his State of the State speech last month that he’s considering requiring the state to review all police brutality cases in which a grand jury fails to bring back an indictment.
The potential release of the grand jury records, and Cuomo’s potential reforms, are welcome news to the Garner family. But for now, they’re in a holding pattern, routinely holding protests and vigils twice a week — chanting “No justice, no peace!” — and waiting to hear from the DOJ.
“We here for [the Garner family],” Iris Baez, Anthony Baez’ mother, told HuffPost. “When all this is finished, we’ll be here for them, just like we’re here for all others.”
