NEW YORK — A judge hearing evidence about Eric Garner’s death from a Staten Island police officer’s chokehold said Wednesday she doesn’t understand why only one of the NYPD sergeants at the scene of the incident was punished.
That sergeant, Kizzy Adonis, who testified at the hearing before Judge Erika Edwards, was the only NYPD officer punished in Garner’s death besides Daniel Pantaleo, who applied the chokehold.
Pantaleo eventually was fired, and Adonis lost 20 days of vacation.
“I’ve got a lot of questions,” said Edwards.
“I know what happened to Sgt. Adonis, and I’m trying to figure out — and I think I’m not the only one — how is it that Sgt. Adonis is the only one who got reprimanded out of everybody there, and it wasn’t even her assignment at the moment?” the judge asked.
A lawyer for Garner’s family, Dianne Lucas, asked Adonis why she faced departmental charges in the case, and the other sergeant, Dhanan Saminath, did not.
“I’m gonna be honest with you — I don’t know why I was charged at all,” Adonis said. “I’m still questioning it.”
Edwards chimed in, “Me too.”
Adonis, who had been assigned to the 120th Precinct in Staten Island two weeks before Garner’s death on the afternoon of July 17, 2014, testified that she was working that day as a patrol supervisor.
She said she stopped at the scene on her way to a precinct meeting within minutes of learning over a police radio that officers had wrestled Garner to the sidewalk.
There, cops told her the father of five had resisted when they tried to arrest him on charges of selling loose cigarettes.
“I was there temporarily because I was on my way to where I was going, and the call came over the air,” Adonis said.
“Sgt. Saminath, on the other hand, was responsible for whatever took place during that incident.”
Adonis said that while at the scene, she asked NYPD Officer Bill Meems, the only cop present with EMT training, if Garner was OK.
“Billy, is he good?” Adonis said she asked.
Meems said, “Yes.”
Adonis testified that she confirmed with Saminath that he had things under control before leaving the scene.
“I know that I said to him, basically, ‘You got this? Because I gotta go,’” Adonis said.
“And he said, ‘Go ahead. Don’t worry. I got this.’"
Adonis denied witness accounts reported in the media saying she told officers to let up on Garner during the fatal arrest.
The highest-ranking official who will testify in the inquest, head of the NYPD’s Internal Affairs Bureau Deputy Commissioner Joseph Reznick, has said IAB punished Adonis and not Saminath because she did not advise officers at the scene and then left it.
Gideon Oliver, one of the lawyers representing Garner’s mother, Gwen Carr, told the New York Daily News that he doubts the truthfulness of many police officers called to testify at the inquiry.
“As to whether or not the officers are lying, if you’re asking for my personal belief, certainly,” Oliver said. “I think there have been a number of officers who’ve told a number of lies.”
The 1873 City Charter clause under which the inquiry is being held says witnesses’ answers can’t be used against them in criminal proceedings unless they commit perjury.
Under the Charter, it’d be up to the Manhattan district attorney to decide whether to bring perjury charges against witnesses in the proceeding.
Manhattan DA-elect Alvin Bragg is one of the lawyers working with Oliver to represent Carr’s family in the case. Oliver said he expects Bragg would recuse himself from the question of whether perjury charges should be brought against any of the officers.
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