NEW YORK DAILY NEWS. The Legal Aid Society wants Officer Daniel Pantaleo’s disciplinary history to be revealed.
The Civilian Complaint Review Board should reveal the disciplinary history of the police officer who put Eric Garner in an apparent chokehold, court papers say.
The Legal Aid Society has filed suit to force the CCRB to turn over information it might have about Daniel Pantaleo, the officer whose takedown of Garner led to his death on Staten Island last year.
“Our city needs to know if the systems of police oversight failed to prevent Garner’s death by failing to deter an officer with a history of excessive force,” the Manhattan Supeme Court suit says.
The CCRB has denied the Legal Aid Society’s requests for the info, saying it’s prevented from doing so for legal and privacy reasons.
“It’s very clear the law does not allow us to reveal any personnel information going into an officer’s file. It’s not even a close question,” CCRB chairman Richard Emery told the Daily News.
Legal Aid lawyer Cynthia Conti-Cook said that law needs to be reformed — and she’s hoping the suit will help in “expanding the conversation.”
“The existence of prior civilian complaints and prosecutions is a matter of public concern,” the suit says. “This court should not interpret civil right laws so broad as to prohibit the CCRB from essentially answering whether Mr. Pantaleo was previously the subject of civilian complaints or a prosecution.”
The suit notes that Garner’s arrest history was made public soon after his death.
The Legal Aid Society is also part of a lawsuit in Staten Island aimed at unsealing the grand jury minutes from the panel that declined to indict Pantaleo on criminal charges in the Garner case.
That case is pending.