Policing While Female and Black

My father, Eric Garner, was killed by New York Police Department officer Daniel Pantaleo a year and a half ago, but last week marks the department’s first official charge of wrongdoing in his case. The charge was not made against Pantaleo, the officer who placed my father in a fatal—and illegal— chokehold, but against Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, one of two supervising officers at the scene.

We know Sgt. Adonis wasn’t even assigned on patrol during the incident. According to Ed Mullins, head of the sergeants’ union, she “responded at her own initiative.” She wasn’t the borough or zone commander. Yet Sgt. Adonis, stripped of her gun and badge, is now being charged on four counts of “failure to supervise.”

[...]

Adonis, who was promoted to sergeant two weeks before my dad’s death, wasn’t part of the team that piled on his back. In the video that captured the incident, we all see Adonis creep away. [...] She went to the ambulance stationed on the corner of Bay Street. According to witnesses at the scene, Adonis spoke to an EMT and made an additional call for assistance—I guess no one else planned on saving my father’s life that day.

[...]

The manager of Bay Beauty Supply heard Sgt. Adonis say to the other officers, “Let up, you got him already.”

[...]

If Sgt. Adonis can be charged with failure to supervise, then I expect the other sergeant at the scene to be charged as well.

  Erica Garner

Do not hold your breath.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.