Sharpton convenes civil rights meeting on chokehold ruling

NEW YORK - Leaders of national civil-rights groups met Thursday in New York as the U.S. Justice Department began an investigation into the death of a black Staten Island man choked by a white police officer.

A state grand jury Wednesday declined to charge Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, 43, whose fatal altercation with police was recorded on video by a bystander. The announcement sparked protests across New York City.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, the television host and activist, brought together 25 civil-rights leaders at his National Action Network in Harlem. They called for U.S. officials to fix what Sharpton called a dysfunctional state grand jury system. Seeking redress on that issue will be the focus of a rally in Washington planned for Dec. 13, he said.

'We want a centralized march around a broken system that these grand jury decisions have underscored, when even with a videotape you cannot decide whether there is probable cause to go to trial,” Sharpton said. 'A man laying down already surrounded by police choking him, and the man saying, ‘I can't breathe.' You can't tell me that's not probable cause to send the case to trial.”

The fact that grand jury couldn't find even a criminal charge of negligence showed that it was biased in favor of the police, Sharpton said. He was joined by speakers including Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League; Melanie Campbell, chief executive of the Black Women's Roundtable; and Hazel Dukes, New York state president of the NAACP.

Protesters gathered from Staten Island to Manhattan's Times Square last night to decry the July 17 death, a reprise of rallies that swept the U.S. after a Missouri grand jury last week declined to indict an officer in the shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson. Police arrested 83 people, Commissioner Bill Bratton said today in an interview on Fox 5 television.

Demonstrations were set for more than 30 U.S. cities Thursday, according to a protester website.

Both the New York and Missouri cases have highlighted racial divisions deepened by violent interactions between the judicial system and black men.

'Mr. Garner's death is one of several recent incidents across the country that have tested the sense of trust that must exist between law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve and protect,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in Washington.

The Justice Department's civil-rights division and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York will lead the probe, he said. Loretta Lynch, that district's top prosecutor, has been nominated to replace Holder, who announced his resignation in September.

'Our office has monitored this case closely,” she said in a statement. 'The investigation will be fair and thorough, and it will be conducted as expeditiously as possible.”

New York officials sought to avert demonstrations like those in Ferguson, which turned violent, with shooting, looting, arson and vandalism.

'If you really want to dignify the life of Eric Garner, you will do so through peaceful protest, you will work relentlessly for change, you will not sully his name with violence or vandalism,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said in a nationally televised address from Staten Island, one of the city's five boroughs.

Garner died after plainclothes officers led by Pantaleo tried to handcuff him, forcing him to the ground. The video showed Pantaleo applying a chokehold, prohibited by department policy, Bratton has said. In the video, Garner repeatedly says, 'I can't breathe.”

A medical examiner ruled his death a homicide, caused by compression of the neck and chest.

Patrick J. Lynch, president of the city's police union, said Pantaleo used a 'takedown technique” learned in training.

'No police officer starts a shift intending to take another human being's life,” Lynch said in a statement.

Pantaleo, 29, a lifelong Staten Island resident who's been a New York Police Department officer for about eight years, said in a statement that he didn't intend to harm anyone, and expressed condolences to the Garner family.

Garner's widow, Esaw, didn't accept them.

'Who is going to play Santa Claus for my grandkids this year?” she said Wednesday night.

In Washington, President Barack Obama said at the annual White House Tribal Nations Conference that the United States has failed to address mistrust between minority communities and police.

'This is an American problem, and not just a black problem or a brown problem or a Native American problem,” he said.

The Justice Department has regularly investigated such deaths after local authorities have finished.

The agency is examining whether Officer Darren Wilson violated the civil rights of 18-year-old Michael Brown when he fatally shot him in Ferguson in August. It is conducting a broader inquiry into whether the 53-officer police force engaged in a pattern of abuse.

In one of the most high-profile cases, prosecutors brought civil-rights charges against four Los Angeles officers involved in the 1991 beating of Rodney King after they were acquitted in a state court. Two were convicted on the federal counts.

U.S. prosecutors also brought civil-rights charges against Francis Livoti, a New York officer who killed a 29-year-old with a chokehold after an errant football hit his car. Livoti was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to more than seven years in prison.

The Justice Department probed the November 2006 killing of another unarmed man, Sean Bell, outside a Queens strip club, but closed the probe after finding insufficient evidence.

The law sets a high standard for civil-rights charges, said Randolph M. McLaughlin, a professor at Pace Law School in White Plains, New York.

'The prosecutor has to show that the police officer intended to deprive the victim of his constitutional rights, his civil rights,” McLaughlin said. 'That's a tough nut to crack.”

In New York, protests grew in size and intensity throughout the night.

At one afternoon demonstration in Staten Island, outside a police station on the borough's Richmond Terrace, about two dozen officers outnumbered protesters. A man led participants in a chant shouting, 'I can't,” with the others responding 'breathe!”

At Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal, about 30 protesters lay silently on the ground holding signs saying 'black lives matter” and 'justice 4 Eric.”

After nightfall, crowds in the hundreds marched through midtown Manhattan amid stopped traffic, spanning two blocks and following a man with a white flag. One sign read: 'Ferguson is Everywhere.” A Times Square street performer in a Spider-Man costume took off down a side street as the roving mass approached.

Where Garner died on Staten Island, outside Bay Beauty Supply, there were simply bouquets, lit candles and a sign saying, 'No ruckus, just justice.”

Wilber reported from Washington, Deprez from Santa Barbara, Calif. Contributors: Brian Chappatta, Jennifer Kaplan and Madeline O'Leary in New York, Patricia Hurtado in federal court in Manhattan and Chris Dolmetsch in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.