RIGHTING A WRONG

Black Cop Who Was Fired for Stopping White Colleague’s Chokehold Gets Pension Back After 13 Years

The judge invoked the death of George Floyd, saying that, while some injustices can never be fully corrected, this case could.

A Black police officer who was fired from her job over a decade ago after she tried to stop a white colleague from choking out a handcuffed Black man during a 2006 arrest has been fully vindicated in court. On Tuesday, a New York court reinstated the pension of former Buffalo Police Officer Cariol Horne, and the judge praised her for stepping up to save a man’s life. Horne said she heard the handcuffed man say he couldn’t breathe, and accused her fellow officer of punching her in the face when she jumped in to try and break his chokehold. The Buffalo Police Department determined she had put her colleague at risk and she was fired in 2008. The white officer was later convicted of abusing his badge by ramming the heads of four handcuffed Black teenagers into a police car, according to The Washington Post. Judge Dennis Ward of the state Supreme Court in Erie County wrote: “While the… George Floyds of the world never had a chance for a ‘do over,’ at least here the correction can be done.”