NEW YORK — The white New York City police officer whose choke hold led to the death of an unarmed black man has been sued three times for allegedly violating the constitutional rights of other blacks he and fellow cops arrested.
A grand jury decision not to indict Daniel Pantaleo on Wednesday in the death of Eric Garner, 43, the man he wrestled to the ground during an attempted arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes on a Staten Island sidewalk in July, sparked waves of angry though largely peaceful demonstrations in several cities.
The Garner case wasn’t the first time Pantaleo, 29, was accused of misconduct, however.
Darren Collins and Tommy Rice alleged in a 2013 federal court lawsuit that Pantaleo and at least four other officers subjected them to “humiliating and unlawful strip searches in public view” after handcuffing them during a March 2012 arrest on Staten Island.
The court complaint charged that the cops, searching for illegal drugs, “pulled down the plaintiffs’ pants and underwear, and touched and searched their genital areas, or stood by while this was done in their presence.”
Pantaleo and three of the officers repeated the searches after they took the suspects to Staten Island’s 120th police precinct, the complaint alleged.
Charges against Collins and Rice, who said they had done nothing wrong, ultimately were dismissed and sealed. The city settled their lawsuit last year, court records show.
Separately, Rylawn Walker alleged that Pantaleo and other cops falsely arrested him on Staten Island for alleged marijuana possession in February 2012. His federal lawsuit against the cops maintained that Walker “was committing no crime at that time and was not acting in a suspicious manner.”
City lawyers have denied the allegations, and the case is pending.
The marijuana charges against Walker were dismissed and sealed on a motion by Staten Island prosecutors, defense lawyer Michael Colihan wrote in an August 2014 letter to U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos.
“To put it mildly, many police on Staten Island have been playing fast, loose and violently with the public they seem to have forgotten they are sworn to protect,” wrote Colihan. “After litigating about 200 of these civil rights matters in the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York since 1977, I have seen no interest by the managers of the New York City Police Department, or anyone employed by the city of New York, in doing anything to stop this.”
City attorney Daniel Passeser complained that the defense letter in part was “designed to fan the flames of anti-police sentiment in the Staten Island community.” He unsuccessfully argued that portions of the letter should be removed from the court docket.
Kenneth Collins, a 22-year-old Staten Island man, in November filed a lawsuit alleging that Pantaleo and other police officers violated his rights during a February 2012 marijuana arrest. Along with being arrested falsely, he “was subjected to a degrading search of his private parts and genitals by the defendants,” the court complaint charged.
The drug charges were dismissed and sealed one day after the arrest, court filings show.
Collins’ lawsuit alleged that the police officers charged him in part in an alleged bid to get overtime pay while processing legal paperwork and obtain credit from superiors for making the arrest.
City attorneys have not yet filed a response to the lawsuit.
Misconduct allegations against city police officers filed with the Civilian Complaint Review Board dropped to 11,501 in 2013, the lowest total in a decade, the agency’s data shows. NYPD currently has approximately 34,500 uniformed officers. The CCRB received 2,739 complaints during the first six months of this year, a 7% increase from the same period of 2013, the data shows.