DIRTY COP

Blacks Have Sued Garner’s Killer Before

For violating their civil rights while on patrol.

The white police officer who put Eric Garner in an NYPD-banned chokehold and killed him has been accused in the past of violating other black people’s civil rights while on patrol. Daniel Pantaleo, who was not indicted for killing Garner, was sued by four black men because of two incidents in 2012 in which the victims allege that Pantaleo stopped, strip-searched, and arrested them without cause. The first case, filed in June 2013, details an incident in which two men, Darren Collins, 46, and Tommy Rice, 42, claim that Pantaleo and a group of other NYPD officers stopped them while they were driving on a Staten Island road. The officers ordered the two men out of the car, handcuffed them, and strip-searched them in public, all without providing a reason for which they believed they had committed a crime (charges against Collins and Rice were later dismissed). In a second case, Rylawn Walker and Kenneth Smith claim that Pantaleo and other officers stopped them without cause while the two were walking together in Staten Island, then illegally strip-searched and arrested them on false marijuana charges.