According to previously undisclosed documents that the New York Times has reviewed, witnesses to the murder of Eric Garner—the Staten Island man who died in a police chokehold last year—recall hearing a female sergeant tell her fellow officers to “let up” on Garner. The manager of a nearby beauty store, Rodney Lee, recalls hearing uniformed patrol sergeant Kizzy Adonis say, “Let up, you got him already.” According to Lee, an officer pinning Garner to the ground looked up but did not let go. Ramsay Orta, the friend who had just eaten lunch with Garner, also told grand jurors that a sergeant had said, “Let him go, let him go, he’s done.” Lee said he testified to grand jurors about what he saw, but the jurors seemed uninterested. “They didn’t ask me nothing,” he said.
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