video, i say to myself as probably all of you do to mr. garner, don t do it, comply. officer pantaleo, don t do it. i said that about the decisions made about both officer pantaleo and mr. garner. but none of us can take back our decisions especially when they lead to the death of another human being. shortly after those comments members of eric garner s family reacted for making what they believe is the right decision but underscoring the point that their fight for justice is not over. commissioner o neill, i thank you for doing the right thing. i truly and sincerely thank you for firing the officer regardless to however you came up to your decision, you finally made a decision that should ve been made five years ago. we will be going for the congressional hearings. we will be trying to reopen the case. we will be going after the rest of the officers involved because it s not over.
supporters around the country, this is perhaps some small measure of justice. but as you said garner s daughter say for some of them, this is just the beginning. they want the case reopened. they are not totally satisfied. they want someone brought to justice, pantaleo and some of the other officers for their father, their son s death. a milestone but not the end of this. perhaps just reigniting and starting the whole thing or continuing the case and giving it perhaps some more momentum because what s significant is that i think this is the first time that somebody in five years has been held accountable for eric garner s death other than himself. ron, the president of the police benevolent association, the union, patrick lynch came out with a fiery response this morning. and then he held a press conference in which there was no reconciliation in his tone whatsoever. his response to what the police commissioner did was a lot of anger. let s listen.
to basically say that he followed the politics rather than the rule of law and the evidence is absolutely embarrassing. to try to say i was a cop for 34 years but now i m the commissioner, i go by different rules, is absolutely wrong. he has more of a responsibility to sometimes stand alone and make a proper appropriate decision. he decided instead not to do that. he decided to run to the corner that has the loudest crowd. ron, your thoughts on that. reporter: well, the police union here is very strong, and they have been defending pantaleo throughout this. for them it was a simple situation of a cop doing a very dangerous arrest that the suspect, garner, did not cooperate, that he was a huge guy, and that he had poor health and that he himself is to blame for what happened is essentially
it s going any further than this. so pantaleo gets fired, which was the least step one i call it. so what s step two? step two is the congressional hearings, re-opening the case, pointing out those who lied on day one lied in front of the grand jury, in front of it was inside the reason why we are trying to get the trial transcripts is because for example, one of the officers got on the stand and made a statement that he said that eric garner was alive and alert when he came to the scene. but rewind back to 7/17/14, he said that eric garner was unresponsive. so that s an example of the lie and that s an example of the cover-up. there was never any truthfulness when they made their statements. there was never any truthfulness when they got on the stand. it was all a lie. so from day one to day now, they re lying. so we want to point out the lies and basically get the case reopened because if there is proof that this officer has lied on the stand in front of judges in front
pivotal moment. joining me now is a civil rights activist and the leading voice in the black lives matter movement. he also is the host of pod save the people. it s a podcast. drey, your initial thoughts on what has happened today. remember, a third of all the people killed by a stranger in this country is actually killed by a police officer. but this is a victory in some ways that pantaleo got fired, he does need to be criminally charged. after garner was killed, the nypd changed three major policies very quietly. the first is that they actually took away the ban on chokeholds. if you look at the policy it says that chokeholds are banned, but in the next page it essentially says that they can be deemed okay if a panel of police officers in the nypd say it s okay. they also loosened restrictions on shooting moving vehicles. they took away the requirement that deadly force had to be used as a last resort. we know that the posse actually