Video After The Jump
(Reuters) - A New York grand jury has decided not to charge a police officer who killed an unarmed black man with a chokehold while trying to arrest him for illegally selling cigarettes, a lawyer for the victim's family said on Wednesday.
The decision comes just a week and a half after a grand jury in Missouri decided not to indict a white police officer in another racially charged killing of a black man.
Eric Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, died in a July 17 incident on Staten Island, New York City's smallest borough, after police officers tackled him and put him in a chokehold.
The city's medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.
The New York Police Department's patrol manual bans chokeholds, calling them dangerous.
Civil rights lawyer Jonathan Moore, who represents the Garner family, said he was told that no indictment would be brought against the white police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, who placed Garner in a chokehold.
The grand jury had been reviewing the Garner case since August, and Pantaleo had testified before it for two hours on Nov. 21, according to his attorney.
The deadly encounter was captured on a video that quickly spread over the Internet and helped fuel debates about how U.S. police use force, particularly against minorities.
The National Action Network, the civil rights group founded by the Rev. Al Sharpton, said that Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, and his widow, Esaw Garner, will speak to the media at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the group's headquarters in Harlem.
Cynthia Davis, the head of the National Action Network in Staten Island, upon hearing the decision not to indict in the Garner case, said: "Please don't tell me that." She declined to comment further.
A spokesman for Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan could not be immediately reached for comment.
Mayor Bill de Blasio will hold a news conference at 4:45 p.m. and has canceled his appearance at the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting, The New York Times reported.
In ruling Garner's death a homicide, the city medical examiner said police officers killed him by compressing his neck and chest. His health problems, including asthma and obesity, were contributing factors, the medical examiner said.
The Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the municipal police union, has maintained that the officers acted properly and within the scope of the law.
(Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Barbara Goldberg and Frank McGurty; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Sandra Maler and Leslie Adler)
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