The city will see the “biggest march” it’s ever seen if Police Officer Daniel Pantaleo isn’t fired, Eric Garner’s daughter warned on Saturday, as she ripped the embattled cop as a “murderer.”
“I’m coming for you!” Emerald Snipes Garner said as she stood alongside Rev. Al Sharpton, among other public officials at National Action Network headquarters in Harlem. “Why? Because you killed my father.”
Garner wore a t-shirt with Pantaleo’s image on the front, with the word “Murderer” emblazoned across the fabric.
“If this police officer is not fired you will see the biggest march that you have ever seen in New York City. I promise you, I promise you,” she said.
Eric Garner was stopped by police in Staten Island on July 17, 2014, for allegedly illegally selling loose cigarettes. Pantaleo was seen in widely-viewed cell phone video placing the 43-year-old in what appears to be a chokehold while trying to arrest him.
Garner can be heard in the video repeatedly shouting, “I can’t breathe!” as he’s wrestled to the pavement during the arrest. He was pronounced dead shortly thereafter at an area hospital.
After officials revealed on Friday that NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Trials Rosemarie Maldonado recommended Pantaleo be fired, Police Benevolent Association president Pat Lynch said the police department was “frozen.”
“Our police officers, unfortunately, are in a position of having to protect themselves rather than spending time protecting you,” Lynch said Friday.
On Saturday, Emerald said the NYPD has “always been on hold.”
“They only engaged when they want to kill you,” she claimed.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams also spoke out against Lynch’s comments, asking him to “please just stop.”
“What you are doing is dangerous,” he said. “How dare you threaten the mayor, threaten the commissioner, threaten the city to not do your job.
“All we are asking for is for police to do their job without choking unarmed people to death.”
Additional reporting by Stephanie Pagones