A former Buffalo police officer, who said she was fired for intervening when a White officer tried to strangle a suspect, will receive her pension after winning a lawsuit Tuesday. The New York High Court has overturned a previous ruling confirming the dismissal of Cariol Horne, CIV Buffalo subsidiary WIVB reported.
In his ruling, Judge Dennis Ward wrote that ‘the city of Buffalo has acknowledged the mistake and recognized the need to undo an injustice from the past. The legal system can at least be the mechanism for enforcing justice, even if it is too late. . ”
“While the Eric Garners and the George Floyds of the world have never had the chance for a ‘do-over’, the correction can at least be done here,” Ward wrote.
Horne received national attention in 2006 when she said she stopped Officer Greg Kwiatkowski’s stranglehold on Neal Mack.
“Neal Mack looked like he was about to die,” Horne said. CBS This Morning in an Interview Last Year. “If I had not stepped in there, he might have. He was handcuffed and suffocated.”
She was finally fired in 2008, a few months before she could be eligible to receive her full pension.
Kwiatkowski sued Horne and her attorney for defamation. In 2011, a judge found that Horne’s lawyer had made eight statements that were considered defamatory and false, including the allegation that Horne ‘saved the life of a suspect who was already in handcuffs and suffocated by Officer Greg Kwiatkowski. . ‘
But Mack maintains that Horne saved his life.
“He choked me. I was handcuffed. Cariol Horne said, ‘You killed him, Greg,’ and she reached out and tried to grab his hand around my neck,” Mack told CBS This Year. Morning said.
Mack sued five officers involved in his arrest in 2012. A jury found no offense in a 5-1 ruling. The judge who sided with Mack was the only black person on the jury, Buffalo News reported.
In 2018, Kwiatkowski was sentenced to four months in prison for an incident in 2009 in which he used ‘illegal and unreasonable violence’ against four black teenagers, including hitting their heads in a car. Ward said knowledge was not made available during “the original decisions in this case by the trial officer and the court.”
“The current societal view on the use of strangulation and physical violence to bring about arrests, coupled with the City of Buffalo’s expression of specific disapproval of such violence through legislation, has also changed the landscape,” Ward added.
Horne is eligible for refund and benefits until August 4, 2010.