Daniel Pantaleo and a sign at the site of Eric Garner's death. Handout; Getty Images
A week after the disciplinary records of the cop who put Eric Garner in a fatal chokehold were leaked, an appeals court has ruled that they should not be made public because of the “substantial and realistic potential” that doing so could endanger the officer’s life.
The unanimous ruling by a state appeals court in Manhattan reverses a lower-court decision to release a summary of the file on Officer Daniel Pantaleo (left).
“Here, in light of the widespread notoriety of Mr. Garner’s death and Officer Pantaleo’s role therein, and the fact that hostility and threats against Officer Pantaleo have been significant enough to cause NYPD’s Threat Assessment Unit to order around-the-clock police protection for him and his family, we find that the gravity of the threats ... demonstrate that disclosure carries a ‘substantial and realistic potential’ for harm, particularly in the form of ‘harassment and reprisals,’” states the ruling, which was made public on Thursday.
Legal Aid sued for the file in 2015.
Last week, a Civilian Complaint Review Board worker was forced to resign for giving ThinkProgress records related to Pantaleo, whose chokehold on Staten Island in July 2014 was caught on camera.
The records revealed that Pantaleo had seven disciplinary complaints and 14 individual allegations lodged against him.