It was a cold November day in Buffalo when Officer Cariol Horne responded to a call for a colleague in need of assistance. What she encountered was a white officer who was apparently “in a rage” who repeatedly punched a handcuffed black man while other officers stood by.
Officer Horne, who is black, heard the handcuffed man say he could not breathe and saw the white officer put him in a stranglehold. In the court documents, it appears that at that point she forcibly removed the white officer and started trading beats with him.
In the aftermath of the quarrel, Officer Horne was reassigned, struck with departmental charges, and finally shot just one year less than twenty on the power she needed to collect her full pension. She tried and failed to reverse the decision as unfair more than once.
On Tuesday, in a result that was explicitly notified of the murder of George Floyd, a state court judge overturned an earlier ruling confirming that she had resigned, and rewrote the end of her police career and gave her the refund and denied benefits she was previously granted.
“The justice system can at least be a mechanism for enforcing justice, even if it is too late,” Judge Dennis E. Ward wrote.
His verdict also refers to the death of Mr. Floyd and Eric Garner, a black man from Staten Island, whose dying words – “I can not breathe” – have become a national rally against police brutality.
“The time is always right to do right,” Justice Ward, Erie District High Court, added with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In a statement, Horne, 53, celebrated the decision.
“My justification costs 15 years, but what was achieved could not be measured,” she said. “I never wanted another police officer to go through what I went through to do the right thing.”
A lawyer for the white officer, Gregory Kwiatkowski, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said the city “always supports any additional judicial review available to Officer Horne and respects the court’s ruling.”
The meeting in 2006 that led to the dismissal of me. Horne, started as a dispute between a woman and an ex-boyfriend who accused her of stealing her social security check. When officers wanted to arrest the ex-boyfriend, the situation became violent.
Mrs. Horne said she saw Officer Kwiatkowski put the man in a stranglehold. Officer Kwiatkowski said he grabbed him by the neck and shoulders in a bear print head from behind, according to court documents. In Officer Kwiatkowski’s account, Ms Horne punched him in the face, pulled him back by his collar and jumped on him.
An internal investigation has acquitted Officer Kwiatkowski of all charges; Horne was offered a four-day suspension, which she turned down. After hearings in 2007 and 2008, the police department found that her use of physical force against a fellow officer was not justified.
She was fired in May. Officer Kwiatkowski was promoted to lieutenant the same year.
“Her behavior had to be encouraged and instead she was fired,” said W. Neil Eggleston, a lawyer for Ms. Horne, said in an interview.
The dispute between Ms Horne and Officer Kwiatkowski did not end when she left the police station. He sued her for defamation and won a $ 65,000 sentence against her.
Officer Kwiatkowski’s own police career ended under a cloud. He retired in 2011 while facing an investigation into home affairs, and the following year he is charged with charges of federal civil rights following the arrest of four black teens. He eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison.
After she was fired, Ms. Horne did work, including as a truck driver, and sometimes lived in her car, reports The Buffalo News. The death of mr. Floyd in Minneapolis, where former officer Derek Chauvin is now on trial for murder in the murder, has brought new attention to her case and the circumstances surrounding it. (Three other officers who were present when Mr Floyd died were also charged with the murder.)
She filed a lawsuit to vacate the dismissal, citing the case concerning Mr. Floyd. Shortly before that, she and others in Buffalo began pushing members of the city’s legislature, the Common Council, to pass a so-called intervention law that required officers to intervene when using one of their own excessive force.
The Buffalo Police Department adopted such a rule in 2019, and last fall, the council approved by a vote of 8 to 1, what he calls ‘Cariol’s law.’
Council President Darius G. Pridgen said a confluence of factors – including Ms. Horne’s advocacy from first-hand experience and the increasing investigation into the misconduct of the police in the wake of Mr. Floyd’s death – creates an environment for action.
“During the protests, we tried to find ways to hold bad police officers accountable,” he said. Pridgen said. After the murder of mr. Floyd and the ensuing protests, he said, “the timing was perfect.”
The law also gives officers who have been fired for the past twenty years for intervening to stop the use of excessive force the chance to challenge their dismissals. In an unusual twist, Mrs. Horne’s case called the law named after her to argue for the outcome.
The lawyers of me. Horne said that although she was fired for unlawfully intervening in an arrest, her actions were in line with what is expected of police officers: she protected a citizen.
“And to George Floyd,” he said. Eggleston, a former White House councilor under President Barack Obama, said: “We really understand what happens when officials do not act like that.”
Ed Shanahan reported.