NEW YORK _ A police officer testifying Tuesday in the trial of Officer Daniel Pantaleo claimed he could see Eric Garner selling loose cigarettes from what he said was no more than 200 feet away _ but which a prosecutor said was actually a distance of 328 feet.
The revelation by Suzanne O'Hare, a prosecutor with the Civilian Complaint Review Board, was meant to question why cops moved to arrest Garner in the first place.
D'Amico also claimed he believed Garner was "playing possum" when he was lying on the sidewalk dying after being held in a chokehold by Pantaleo. The officer also said, while viewing a picture of Pantaleo moments after the start of the Garner takedown, that his partner had his arm around Garner's body, not his neck.
That prompted an audible "Oh, come on," from Eric Garner's widow, Esaw Garner.
At that point, one of Pantaleo's lawyers. John Tynan, moved for her to be removed from the trial room _ a request shot down by NYPD Judge Rosemarie Maldonado.
Pantaleo is standing trial in NYPD disciplinary court for Garner's death. He was charged with attempted reckless assault and strangulation for using a banned chokehold maneuver on Garner as he and other officers were trying to arrest him for selling "loosies."
Garner's pained gasps for air _ where he panted "I can't breathe" 11 times _ were captured on video and helped fuel the nationwide Black Lives Matter movement. A Staten Island grand jury refused to indict Pantaleo and the Department of Justice has functionally dropped its civil rights investigation.
The worst penalty Pantaleo faces is termination from NYPD employment. Even if he is fired, he may still receive a pension and retirement benefits.
Pantaleo joined the NYPD in 2006. Since the Garner incident in 2014, he continued to earn overtime in 2015 and 2016. When that was pointed out by the Daily News, his overtime dropped from abut 250 hours a year to 60 hours in 2017 and then to zero in 2018, records show.
On Friday, Mayor Bill de Blasio slammed the NYPD lieutenant who called the death of Eric Garner "not a big deal" in a text with another officer.
"It's absolutely unacceptable," de Blasio said as he stood outside an ethanol refinery in Gowrie, Iowa, his first stop in his 2020 run for the White House. "That's not moral wording."
The text exchange between Lt. Christopher Bannon and Sgt. Dhanan Saminath within minutes after the confrontation came to light Thursday during the trial.
As Garner was loaded into an ambulance and sent to Richmond University Medical Center without a pulse, Saminath notified Bannon about the Staten Island resident's apparent death.
"Danny and Justin went to collar Eric Garner and he resisted," Saminath typed. "When they took him down Eric went into cardiac arrest. He's unconscious. Might be DOA."
"For the smokes?" Bannon asked.
"Yeah," Saminath said. "They observed him selling. ... Danny tried to grab him, they both went down. They called the (ambulance) ASAP. He's most likely DOA. He has no pulse."
"Not a big deal," Bannon replied. "We were effecting a lawful arrest."
The lieutenant's "Not a big deal" comment drew an outraged response from the gallery.
Bannon said on the stand that he had written his "not a big deal" text to comfort Pantaleo.
