Don’t Hold Your Breath: Fate of Federal Case Against NYPD for Murder of Eric Garner Unclear w/ Racist in Whitehouse
/In Racist System YOU Can be Legally Executed by White Cops Anytime, Anyplace in Front of Cameras & Witnesses. From [HERE] A federal civil rights investigation into the police chokehold death of Eric Garner has been moving forward in New York, but its future is uncertain as a U.S. attorney general with a law-and-order bent takes over the Justice Department.
Two people with inside knowledge of the probe say a federal grand jury in Brooklyn met as late as last week to hear testimony about Garner's deadly confrontation with New York Police Department officers on Staten Island in 2014.
Garner's dying words, "I can't breathe," became a slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement.
In recent weeks, officers who were present when Officer Daniel Pantaleo wrapped his arm around Garner's neck have testified before the grand jury, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the secret proceedings and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Whether such testimony continues may depend on internal Justice Department politics.
The federal inquiry, which began after an all white state grand jury declined to charge Pantaleo in 2014, already stalled once last year when prosecutors based at the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn expressed doubt that there was enough evidence to make a criminal case against the officer. [MORE] and [MORE]
Their hesitation resulted in the Justice Department, in the waning months of President Barack Obama's term, dispatching Washington-based prosecutors to New York to forge ahead, according to a third person with knowledge of the case, who also was not authorized to discuss the inquiry and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
It is unclear whether new Attorney General Jeff Sessions will take an interest in the case. Both the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn declined to discuss it Friday. Pantaleo's attorney, Stuart London, also had no comment.
But Sessions has the power to freeze the investigation and order a review by Civil Rights Division under new leadership for the unit "that reflects his ideology," said former federal prosecutor David Weinstein.
Sessions had been a vocal critic of the Obama administration's aggressive response to allegations of police misconduct.