Where Garner died, changes in policing win little applause

A police cruiser constantly sits a few feet from a small floral memorial to Eric Garner on the Staten Island sidewalk where he spent his dying moments five years ago.

Tompkinsville Park, which police were targeting for patrols when they encountered Garner selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, remains a gathering place for desperate people.

Expletives flew on a recent hot afternoon as park regulars discussed everything from drugs and mental illness to jail conditions and the bail paid so they could sit on a park bench. It was the day after Police Commissioner James O'Neill announced his decision to fire the white officer who put Garner in a chokehold, hastening his death and making the man's dying words, "I can't breathe," a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.

A woman stops to photograph the make-shift memorial, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, where Eric Garner died in a police chokehold, in the Staten Island borough of New York. After five years of investigations and protests, the New York City Police Department on Monday fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was involved in the 2014 chokehold death of Garner, the black man whose dying gasps of "I can't breathe" gave voice to a national debate over race and police use of force. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

"If the police are here, they just move to the other side of the park and do their business there," said longtime resident Lisa Soto, taking a long drag from a cigarette. "They sell everything here. Nothing has changed."

That may be, some residents say, because police officers are now much more careful about how they interact with the public — more cautious when dealing with suspects and less likely to bother with the kind of nuisance enforcement that was a priority five years ago.

"When you give a lot of leeway like that, the place becomes lawless," said resident Doug Brinson. "It's been lawless for five years. Five years people do what they want to do on this block. Five years straight."

A woman passes a make-shift memorial to Eric Garner, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, where he died from a police department chokehold, in the Staten Island borough of New York. After five years of investigations and protests, the New York City Police Department on Monday fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was involved in the 2014 chokehold death of Garner, the black man whose dying gasps of "I can't breathe" gave voice to a national debate over race and police use of force. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

Bert Bernan, a former construction worker on disability, said respect for the police has plummeted and he sees crime as having risen in the neighborhood where he grew up in the 1960s.

"I remember, me and my friends, if we were goofing off on the corner and the cop waved a nightstick at you, you knew, get the hell off the corner and don't give him any lip," Bernan said. "Back then, you didn't have hoodlums hanging out on street corners; what we have here is a disgrace."

Garner's death five summers ago was an inflection point for the New York Police Department. Caught on video, the fatal encounter between Garner, a black man, and Officer Daniel Pantaleo led the nation's largest police force to train officers to de-escalate confrontations and to reassess how interact with the public.

A New York City Police Dept. officer sits in his car at the head of the block, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, where Eric Garner died from a police chokehold five years ago, in the Staten Island borough of New York. After five years of investigations and protests, the New York City Police Department on Monday fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was involved in the 2014 chokehold death of Garner, the black man whose dying gasps of "I can't breathe" gave voice to a national debate over race and police use of force. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

A bystander's cellphone video showed Pantaleo wrapping his arm around Garner's neck and taking him to the ground with a banned chokehold near where the Staten Island Ferry takes commuters and tourists to and from Manhattan.

After Garner's death, the police department required all 36,000 officers to undergo three days of training, including classes focused on de-escalation. Last year, it began training officers on fair and impartial policing, teaching them to recognize biases and rely on facts, not racial stereotypes.

In March, it finished outfitting all patrol officers with body cameras. And the department now requires officers to detail the actions they took each time they used force — not just when they fired their gun.

A make-shift memorial to Eric Garner is affixed to a building wall, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, where he died in a police chokehold five years ago, in the Staten Island borough of New York. Police Commissioner James O'Neill announced Monday that he has fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo based on a recent recommendation of a department disciplinary judge. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

Following a court ruling and a policy shift, the city dramatically reduced officers' use of stop and frisk, a practice in which officers stop people on the streets and search them for weapons. In 2011, the NYPD reported 685,724 such stops. Last year, there were about 11,000.

"That has led to hundreds of thousands of fewer police-civilian encounters, each of which has the potential to escalate into something like what happened to Eric Garner," said Christopher Dunn, a lawyer with the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said his priority for the department is to ensure something like Garner's death never happens again.

Doug Brinson talks about Eric Garner Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, where he died in a police chokehold five years ago, in the Staten Island borough of New York. After five years of investigations and protests, the New York City Police Department on Monday fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, who was involved in the 2014 chokehold death of Garner, the black man whose dying gasps of "I can't breathe" gave voice to a national debate over race and police use of force. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

"The NYPD of today is a different institution than it was just a few years ago," de Blasio said Monday after the department fired Pantaleo.

"I know the NYPD has changed profoundly. I know that members of the NYPD learned the lessons of this tragedy. They acted on it, they did something about it. It is a beginning, but we have a lot more to do, and the change has to get deeper and deeper. And that is not a top-down enterprise - that is for all of us to do."

In his reaction to Pantaleo's firing, the head of the city's main police union noted a retreat some Staten Island residents say they're already seeing.

A man sits on steps, in front of a door inscribed "Please Don't Sell Heroin On This Stoop," Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, adjacent to the location where Eric Garner died form a police chokehold five years ago, in the Staten Island borough of New York. The New York City Police Department on Monday fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, involved in the 2014 chokehold death of Garner, the black man whose dying gasps of "I can't breathe" gave voice to a national debate over race and police use of force. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

"Right now, nothing's really getting enforced," said Pat Lynch, the head of the Police Benevolent Association. "What's happening is, the public calls 911 and we respond. Quality-of-life issues are not being enforced. If it is enforced, the district attorneys' offices are throwing them out and downgrading them. The message is clear: Don't go out and do your job."

In the years since Garner's death, use-of-force complaints against the NYPD have fallen sharply, according to data compiled by the city's Civilian Complaint Review Board. In 2014, there were 2,412. In 2018, there were 1,752, marking a 27% drop.

A study released in February showed the NYPD had been sued for misconduct 10,656 times in the last five years and paid $361.5 million in settlements. The city paid Garner's family $5.9 million in 2015 to settle a wrongful death claim.

Two New York City Police Dept. vehicles pass Tompkinsville Park, in the Staten Island borough of New York, Tuesday, Aug. 20, 2019, where a garbage can holds a discarded "We Are Eric Garner" poster. After five years of investigations and protests, the New York City Police Department on Monday fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo, involved in the 2014 chokehold death of Garner, the black man whose dying gasps of "I can't breathe" gave voice to a national debate over race and police use of force. (AP PhotoRichard Drew)

O'Neill, who ascended to the post in 2016, led the department's shift from the "broken windows" theory of policing, embraced by his predecessor Bill Bratton, that viewed low-level offenses such as selling loose cigarettes and jumping subway turnstiles as a gateway to bigger crimes.

O'Neill, who was the department's chief of patrol at the time of Garner's death, implemented a neighborhood policing model as commissioner that is designed to give patrol officers more time to walk around and interact with people in the communities they police rather than staying in their cars and responding only to 911 calls.

But critics say that broken windows hasn't gone away, and that officers are finding new low-level targets, such as immigrant delivery people who get around on electric bikes. And while the use of stop and frisk has dropped significantly, statistics show the same racial disparities exist.

Since Garner's death, the police department has also gotten cagier about officer discipline and hasn't always provided the public with the names of officers involved in shootings, critics say.

"They've gone backward, and we would argue that in some cases especially around police transparency they've gone backward by decades, said Joo-Hyun Kang, the director of Communities United for Police Reform.

The NYPD has retreated in recent years from disclosing punishment details in most disciplinary cases, citing a state law that keeps personnel records secret. O'Neill has said he supports changing the law. The union opposes changes.

Associated Press video journalist David R. Martin contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Friday that Israel's use of U.S.-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but wartime conditions prevented U.S. officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.

The finding of “reasonable” evidence to conclude that the U.S. ally had breached international law in its conduct of the war in Gaza was released in a summary of a report being delivered to Congress on Friday. It is the strongest statement that the Biden administration has made yet.

But the caveat that the U.S. was unable immediately to link specific U.S. weapons to individual strikes by Israeli forces in Gaza could give the administration leeway in any future decision on whether to restrict provisions of offensive weapons to Israel.

The first-of-its-kind assessment, which was compelled by President Joe Biden’s fellow Democrats in Congress, comes after seven months of airstrikes, ground fighting and aid restrictions that have claimed the lives of nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

While U.S. officials were unable to gather all the information they needed on specific strikes, the report said given Israel's “significant reliance” on U.S.-made weapons, it was “reasonable to assess” that they had been used by Israel's security forces in instances “inconsistent” with its obligations under international humanitarian law “or with best practices for mitigating civilian harm.”

Israel's military has the experience, technology and know-how to minimize harm to civilians, but “the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions as to whether the IDF is using them effectively in all cases," the report said.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who led the push in Congress, told reporters that even even though the administration had reached a general finding, “they’re ducking a determination on the hard cases, politically inconvenient cases.”

Biden has tried to walk an ever-finer line in his support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Hamas. He has faced growing rancor at home and abroad over the soaring Palestinian death toll and the onset of famine, caused in large part by Israeli restrictions on the movement of food and aid into Gaza. Tensions have been heightened further in recent weeks by Netanyahu’s pledge to expand the Israeli military’s offensive in the crowded southern city of Rafah, despite Biden's adamant opposition.

Biden is in the closing months of a tough reelection campaign against Donald Trump. He faces demands from many Democrats that he cut the flow of offensive weapons to Israel and denunciation from Republicans who accuse him of wavering on support for Israel at its time of need.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the review was unnecessary “and only contributes to politically motivated anti-Israel sentiment.”

“Now is the time to stand with our ally Israel and ensure they have the tools they need," he said in a statement.

The Democratic administration took one of the first steps toward conditioning military aid to Israel in recent days when it paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs out of concern over Israel’s threatened offensive on Rafah, a southern city crowded with more than a million Palestinians, a senior administration official said.

The presidential directive, agreed to in February, obligated the Defense and State departments to conduct “an assessment of any credible reports or allegations that such defense articles and, as appropriate, defense services, have been used in a manner not consistent with international law, including international humanitarian law.”

Nothing in the presidential directive would have triggered any cutoff of arms if the administration had more definitively ruled that Israel’s conduct had violated international law.

The agreement also obligated them to tell Congress whether they deemed that Israel has acted to “arbitrarily to deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly,” delivery of any U.S.-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza for starving civilians there.

On this question, the report cited “deep concerns” that Israel played a significant role in preventing adequate aid from reaching starving Palestinians. However, it said Israel had recently taken some positive steps, although still inadequate, and the U.S. government did not currently find Israel restricting aid deliveries in a way that violated U.S. law governing foreign militaries that receive U.S. military aid.

Van Hollen accused the administration of glossing over what he said were clear Israeli blocks on food and aid deliveries during much of the war. “That’s why we have hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that have nothing to do with Hamas on the verge of starvation,” he said.

Lawmakers and others who advocated for the review said Biden and previous American leaders have followed a double standard when enforcing U.S. laws governing how foreign militaries use U.S. support, an accusation the Biden administration denies. They had urged the administration to make a straightforward legal determination of whether there was credible evidence that specific Israeli airstrikes on schools, crowded neighborhoods, medical workers, aid convoys and other targets, and restrictions on aid shipments into Gaza, violated the laws of war and human rights.

Their opponents argued that a U.S. finding against Israel would weaken it at a time it is battling Hamas and other Iran-backed groups. Any sharply critical findings on Israel are sure to add to pressure on Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel’s military and further heighten tensions with Netanyahu’s hard-right government over its conduct of the war against Hamas.

Any finding against Israel also could endanger Biden’s support in this year's presidential elections from some voters who keenly support Israel.

At the time the White House agreed to the review, it was working to head off moves from Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to start restricting shipments of weapons to Israel.

Israel launched its offensive after an Oct. 7 assault into Israel, led by Hamas, killed about 1,200 people. Two-thirds of the Palestinians killed since then have been women and children, according to local health officials. U.S. and U.N. officials say Israeli restrictions on food shipments since Oct. 7 have brought on full-fledged famine in northern Gaza.

Human rights groups long have accused Israeli security forces of committing abuses against Palestinians and have accused Israeli leaders of failing to hold those responsible to account. In January, in a case brought by South Africa, the top U.N. court ordered Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive.

Israel says it is following all U.S. and international law, that it investigates allegations of abuse by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza is proportional to the existential threat it says is posed by Hamas.

Biden in December said “indiscriminate bombing” was costing Israel international backing. After Israeli forces targeted and killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in April, the Biden administration for the first time signaled it might cut military aid to Israel if it didn’t change its handling of the war and humanitarian aid.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, in the 1980s and early 1990s, were the last presidents to openly hold back weapons or military financing to try to push Israel to change its actions in the region or toward Palestinians.

A report to the Biden administration by an unofficial, self-formed panel including military experts, academics and former State Department officials detailed Israeli strikes on aid convoys, journalists, hospitals, schools and refugee centers and other sites. They argued that the civilian death toll in those strikes — such as an Oct. 31 strike on an apartment building reported to have killed 106 civilians — was disproportionate to the blow against any military target.

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Zeke Miller and Mike Balsamo contributed.

Palestinians mourn their relatives killed in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip, at a hospital in Rafah, Gaza, Friday, May 10, 2024. (AP Photo/Ismael Abu Dayyah)

U.S. President Joe Biden boards Marine One at Moffett Airfield in Mountain View, Calif., Thursday, May 9, 2024. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Pool Photo via AP)