Eric Garner Case Is Settled by NYC for $5.9 Million

[Dominus Atheos]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/14/nyreg ... .html?_r=0

New York City reached a settlement with the family of Eric Garner on Monday, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve a wrongful-death claim over his killing by the police on Staten Island last July, the city comptroller and a lawyer for the family said.

The agreement, reached a few days before the anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death, headed off one legal battle even as a federal inquiry into the killing and several others at the state and local level remain open and could provide a further accounting of how he died.

Still, the settlement was a pivotal moment in a case that has engulfed the city since the afternoon of July 17, 2014, when two officers approached Mr. Garner as he stood unarmed on a sidewalk, and accused him of selling untaxed cigarettes. One of the officers used a chokehold — prohibited by the Police Department — to subdue him, and that was cited by the medical examiner as a cause of Mr. Garner’s death.

The killing of Mr. Garner, 43, followed by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., in August, set off a national debate about policing actions in minority communities and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system.

Mr. Garner’s final words — “I can’t breathe” — repeated 11 times, became a national rallying cry. A Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict the officer who used the chokehold, Daniel Pantaleo, fueled weeks of demonstrations. The protests eased after two police officers in Brooklyn were fatally shot in December by a man who suggested he was avenging the deaths of Mr. Garner and Mr. Brown.

The killings of the officers shook the city anew, deepening tensions between the police and Mayor Bill de Blasio and slowing a push to enact a host of criminal justice reforms. Last year, Mr. Garner’s relatives, including his widow, Esaw Garner, and his mother, Gwen Carr, filed a notice of claim — a procedural step that must precede a lawsuit — against the city. In the notice, they said were seeking $75 million in damages. Since then, the family has been in talks with the comptroller’s office.

“Mr. Garner’s death is a touchstone in our city’s history and in the history of the entire nation,” the comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, said in a telephone interview late on Monday. “Financial compensation is certainly not everything, and it can’t bring Mr. Garner back. But it is our way of creating balance and giving a family a certain closure.”

The family had given the city a deadline of Friday, the anniversary of the death, to come to an agreement or the relatives would move forward with the lawsuit, Jonathan C. Moore, the lawyer for Mr. Garner’s family, said. (In wrongful-death cases, the claimants have two years to file suit.)

The agreement came after months of halting negotiations. It was among the biggest settlements reached so far as part of a strategy by Mr. Stringer, to settle major civil rights claims even before a lawsuit is filed. He has said the aim is to save taxpayers the expense, and families the pain, of a long legal process. He said five lawyers from his office were involved in the negotiations, which ended on Monday.

But the resolution of the legal claim against the city did not provide any greater clarity on the actions of the officers that day or on the policing strategies that have come under criticism in the year that has followed.

The relatives of Mr. Garner, along with Mr. Moore, are expected to discuss the settlement at a news conference scheduled for Tuesday morning at the Harlem offices of the National Action Network, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton.

On Saturday, Mr. Garner’s family is expected to lead a rally outside the Brooklyn offices of the United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York to call for a federal case to be brought against the officers involved in Mr. Garner’s death.

“This is not about people getting money,” Mr. Sharpton said on Monday. “This is about justice. We’ve got to restructure our police departments and how we deal with policing nationwide.”

The city medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, citing the chokehold and the compression of Mr. Garner’s chest by other officers who held him down.

Several inquiries into Mr. Garner’s death were still pending, including investigations by the United States attorney’s office, the Civilian Complaint Review Board and state health officials, who are looking into the actions of emergency medical responders in treating Mr. Garner.

The Police Department has concluded its internal investigation but has yet to say whether any officers would be disciplined.

The agreement with the city does not cover the private hospital that sent the responders, Richmond University Medical Center. As Mr. Garner lay on the ground, he was not given oxygen. While a hospital spokesman said there were no lawsuits against it over Mr. Garner’s death, Mr. Moore on Monday said the family had also reached a financial settlement with the hospital before a suit was filed; the amount of that agreement was confidential, he said.

“It’s not ‘mission accomplished,’ but at least it brings a measure of justice to the family,” Mr. Moore said.Mr. de Blasio, speaking to reporters shortly before the settlement was reached, said the anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death was on his mind. “I think it’s on the mind of many New Yorkers,” the mayor said. “I think we’ve come a long way, even in the last year, in terms of bringing police and community together.”

After the settlement, Mr. de Blasio said in a statement that he hoped “the Garner family can find some peace and finality” from it.

In recent months, the comptroller’s office has reached major settlements in several cases without a suit being filed, effectively cutting out involvement by the city’s Law Department.

Mr. Stringer reached a $6.4 million deal with David Ranta, who was imprisoned for 23 years after a wrongful-murder conviction, and a $2.25 million settlement with the family of Jerome Murdough, who died in an overheated cell at the Rikers Island jail complex.

But while the approach spares the city and those hurt by it from protracted legal fights, it has come under criticism for sidelining experienced lawyers at the Law Department who might better gauge the city’s legal liability.

“The determination of appropriate damage levels is a complex, nuanced process,” said Victor A. Kovner, a former city corporation counsel. “The notion that the comptroller, without the benefit of that experience, seeks to make these resolutions on his own is in my experience grandstanding and against the city’s interest.”

Mr. Kovner said settlements in wrongful-death and police-brutality cases must take into account the pain and suffering of the person as well as future earnings and financial damage to the family. In the case of Mr. Garner, his apparent suffering in video images would have probably been a major factor in any settlement discussions.

In 2001, a suit brought by Abner Louima, a Haitian man tortured with a broomstick while in police custody at a Brooklyn precinct station house in 1997, was settled for $8.75 million.

That agreement was reached three years into the suit brought by Mr. Louima and came after federal trials in which several officers were convicted in the attack, including one who was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Nearly five years after the killing of Amadou Diallo in 1999, the city settled with his relatives for $3 million. The city settled a suit over the 2006 fatal shooting of Sean Bell for $3.25 million.

Mr. Stringer defended his approach in Mr. Garner’s case, saying it was appropriate in one of such magnitude and importance. “The work of our general counsel and the lawyers involved in this case and others has proved the quality and seriousness of the way we have looked at these cases,” he said. “We don’t settle every case that comes our way.”

Just to remind everyone, this money comes from the city coffers and doesn't affect the police or the police budget in any way.

[Adam Reynolds]

Just to remind everyone, this money comes from the city coffers and doesn't affect the police or the police budget in any way.

It does in the sense that it causes the city to have less money to give to the police department in the future. That tends to happen after lawsuits. Though NYC is probably large enough to get by without much damage, this is a much larger deal in smaller cities or counties in which a major lawsuit can nearly bankrupt them.

[Purple]

Just to remind everyone, this money comes from the city coffers and doesn't affect the police or the police budget in any way.

It does in the sense that it causes the city to have less money to give to the police department in the future. That tends to happen after lawsuits. Though NYC is probably large enough to get by without much damage, this is a much larger deal in smaller cities or counties in which a major lawsuit can nearly bankrupt them.

Thing is, the city budged covers things other than the police as well. Cutting the entire budget by X% does not mean that every single item on the budget gets cut by X% but that those items deemed least important get cut massively so as to support those deemed more important. So there is a decent probability that something else will be cut instead. And besides, even if you were to cut the police budget what would that achieve? A pay cut across the board for officers? A smaller doughnut and coffee budget? That's hardly going to fix anything. It'll only end up hurting even those with little or no guilt and drive them further toward corruption to make up the lost revenue. So as much as it may sound like justice I would be weary of wishing the police to get punished by cutting money because it at best achieves nothing good.

Seriously, your law enforcement system needs some ground up reforms.

[madd0ct0r]

It means minds at the top suddenly focus on avoiding a repeat case next year. It means that malpractice costs

[Dominus Atheos]

The head of the NYPD union has an op-ed:

NYPD union head on the city’s ‘obscene’ Eric Garner settlement

Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, blasts the city’s record-breaking $5.9 million settlement with the family of police chokehold victim Eric Garner in this exclusive column.

I question: where is the justice for New York taxpayers? Where is the consistency in the civil system?

In our civil courts, which are charged with the important responsibility of assessing liability and imposing damages in these types of cases, families are only awarded damages based on calculable, provable facts, such as indisputable misconduct, past earnings and conscious pain and suffering. Settlements such as this are regulated by legal and judicial professionals to ensure that neither politics nor emotion override common sense.

In my view, the City has chosen to abandon its fiscal responsibility to all of its citizens and genuflect to the select few who curry favor with the city government.

This is a repeat of the shameful settlement mandated by City Hall in the “Central Park Five” litigation. Unfortunately, the City remains on a slippery slope in abusing the trust of the hard-working, taxpaying citizens of New York.

The settlement amount tendered to the Garner family is obscene: it is a stark departure from typical settlements in similar cases and is clearly an attempt by the Mayor’s Office to placate outside political agendas. While the death of Mr. Garner while resisting arrest was unforeseeable, this excessive and exorbitant settlement was not: although Mr. Garner did not provide his family with an abundance of wealth, it was clear from the outset that the Mayor’ s Office would: Mr. Garner’s family should not be rewarded simply because he repeatedly chose to break the law and resist arrest.

The responsibility of the City in paying damages, if any, to Mr. Garner’s family should be proportionate to its responsibility for Mr. Garner’s death, which was at best, minimal.

Stay classy, NYPD.

[Simon_Jester]

IS five to six million dollars that unusual or unreasonable in civil suits for wrongful death where someone wrongfully and deliberately kills another human being?

[Flagg]

DA, as long as the NYPD isn't firing wildly into crowds trying to hit a suspect, emptying their weapons only to hit every bystander in their path yet missing their targets, they think they're doing a wonderful job. So outrage over them murdering a black person selling loosies must just be bewildering.

[Dominus Atheos]

MINNEAPOLIS — As victims of police misconduct across the country file an increasing number of lawsuits, taxpayers are bearing the brunt of the financial burden.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the 10 U.S. cities with the largest police departments paid out over $248 million in settlements last year in cases related to police misconduct. That’s an increase of 48 percent from 2010, the first of five consecutive years for which the Journal obtained data through public records requests.

When totaled, the five years of police misconduct in 10 cities represented $1.02 billion in payouts to victims or their families, including “beatings, shootings and wrongful imprisonment.” If other forms of misconduct such as vehicle collisions and property damage are included, the total rises to $1.4 billion.

In their report last week, Zusha Elinson and Dan Frosch offer some insight into how that total breaks down:

“For most of the police departments surveyed by the Journal, the costliest claims were allegations of civil-rights violations and other misconduct, followed by payouts on car collisions involving the police. Misconduct cases were the costliest for New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington, Dallas and Baltimore. Car-crash cases were the most expensive for Houston, Phoenix and Miami-Dade, a county police department.”

Taxpayers, not police departments, end up paying for police misconduct, the reporters continue:

“Cities such as New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia are self-insured, meaning any payouts come out of city funds. Others have insurance that kicks in at a certain payment level in each case. Smaller municipalities often pool risk with others, but the cost of premiums can increase after incidents occur, much like car insurance. It is almost unheard of that officers pay out of their own pockets, according to a 2014 study on police liability by Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA law professor.”

Experts interviewed by the Journal suggest that the availability of video recording is a major factor in the rise of successful lawsuits, a theory supported by two recent multimillion dollar settlements against police. On July 13, the City of New York and Eric Garner’s relatives agreed to a $5.9 million dollar settlement. Garner died a little over a year ago after NYPD officers put the 43-year-old black man in a chokehold. A video recorded by a bystander and widely circulated online shows Garner repeatedly crying out, “I can’t breathe,” as police pin him to the ground.

And, the Los Angeles Times reported on a $4.7 million settlement between the city of Gardena, an L.A. suburb, and the family of Ricardo Diaz Zeferino, who was killed by police during a 2013 shooting caught on police video cameras. The video, released to the public last week, shows Diaz Zeferino searching for a stolen bicycle with two others, his coworkers Eutiquio Acevedo Mendez and Jose Amado. Police believed the trio were bike thieves and held them at gunpoint. In the video, the Times reports, “the men are shown with their hands raised as officers had their guns drawn. After Diaz Zeferino drops his hands near his waist multiple times, a flurry of shots are fired. Diaz Zeferino was killed. Mendez was hit near his spine but survived. Amado was unharmed.”

In both cases, police escaped criminal prosecution but faced successful civil suits. And in both cases, relatives of the deceased say the settlement money won’t solve the larger problems of police misconduct that led to these deaths.

Last week, The New York Times reported that Eric Garner’s relatives have renewed their calls for a federal investigation into his killing. “Don’t congratulate us; this is not a victory. The victory will come when we get justice,” said Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, at a press conference.

http://www.mintpressnews.com/police-mis ... 765/print/

[Edi]

Edit: The fuck do you mean I can't delete posts or threads in N&P, only edit them?

And the editing also has a time window after which it becomes impossible. A legacy of times long past, when there were some dishonest shits who would go back and delete posts or edit them after the fact in order to deny they had made the arguments they did. Many of those people can be found in Parting Shots, but the policy has stayed in place.

I moved your post and deleted the two filler ones.