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Widely circulated images, caught on the subway closed-circuit system and distributed by the NYPD, show him 
pushing pressure cookers in the Fulton Street station using a shopping cart, NYPD officials said. 
Mr. Griffin underwent a psychiatric evaluation before he was transported to Manhattan Criminal Court, NYPD 
officials said. Once in court, he failed to post bond of $200,000 and a judge ordered him held in jail, court 
records show. 
Mr. Griffin formerly resided in the town of Bruno in Logan County, W.Va., and has an extensive criminal record 
there, officials from the Logan County Sheriff's Office said in a statement. 
Mr. Griffin was arrested by the Logan County Sheriff's Department at least three times within the last eight 
years, the officials said. Charges brought against him ranged from possession of a controlled substance involving 
weapons to the use of obscene material to seduce a minor, according to the officials. 
Daniel Pantaleo, Officer Who Held Eric Gamer in Chokehold, Is Fired 
NYT 
By Ashley Southall 
8/19/19 
The New York City police officer whose chokehold was partly blamed for Eric Garner's death in police custody 
in 2014 was fired from the Police Department on Monday, ending a bitter, five-year legal battle that had cast a 
shadow over the nation's largest police force and the city it protects. 
The police commissioner, James P. O'Neill, dismissed the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, just over two weeks after a 
police administrative judge found him guilty of violating a department ban on chokeholds. 
"The unintended consequence of Mr. Gamer's death must have a consequence of its own," Mr. O'Neill said. 
"Therefore I agree with the deputy commissioner of trial's legal findings and recommendations. It is clear that 
Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer." 
Mr. Garner died on July 17, 2014, after Officer Pantaleo tackled him from behind, then, along with other 
officers, pressed him down on the pavement. Captured on video, the arrest and Mr. Garner's last words - "I 
can't breathe" — galvanized the Black Lives Matter movement. 
The case had defined the Police Department's relationship with the public under Mayor Bill de Blasio, who 
campaigned for office on a promise to reverse the aggressive policing of low-level crimes — known as the 
"broken windows" strategy — that his predecessor had championed. The mayor had come under intense 
criticism for not pushing to have Officer Pantaleo fired sooner. 
At a news conference in City Hall, Mr. de Blasio said the firing of Mr. Pantaleo "ended a chapter that has 
brought our people so much pain and so much fear these last five years." 
"Today we have finally seen justice done," said Mr. de Blasio, who is running for president on his credentials as 
a progressive Democrat. "We must devote ourselves to this simple goal: No one should have to go through the 
agony that the city has gone through here. Let this be the last tragedy." 
The leader of the city's largest police union immediately denounced the decision, saying Mr. O'Neill had bowed 
to "anti-police extremists" and that Mr. Pantaleo's dismissal sent a message that the city did not stand behind its 
officers when they make arrests. 
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"We are urging all New York City police officers to proceed with the utmost caution in this new reality, in which 
they may be deemed 'reckless' just for doing their job," the Police Benevolent Association president, Patrick J. 
Lynch, said in a statement. "We will uphold our oath, but we cannot and will not do so by needlessly 
jeopardizing our careers or personal safety." 
Mr. Garner's family said it would continue to press for congressional hearings into his death and for state 
legislation making it a crime for a police officer to use a chokehold. They also continued to call for other 
officers involved in Mr. Garner's arrest to be punished for their actions. 
"For Commissioner O'Neill, I thank you for doing the right thing," said Emerald Snipes Gamer, Mr. Gamer's 
daughter, at a news conference. "You finally made a decision that should have been made five years ago." 
For years, the Gamer family, some elected officials and critics of the Police Department have said Mr. Gamer's 
death was an outcome of the department's "broken windows" strategy, which affected black and Latino 
neighborhoods disproportionately. 
As protests grew, Officer Pantaleo became a symbol of longstanding problems with how the police treat people, 
mostly black and Latino, suspected of low-level crimes. Mr. Gamer died as he was being arrested on charges of 
selling untaxed cigarettes on Staten Island. 
After Mr. Gamer's death, the Police Department scaled back the heavy enforcement of low-level crimes. But 
Officer Pantaleo's continued employment on the police force still infuriated Mr. Gamer's family and their 
supporters. They lobbied for the officer to be fired and stripped of his pension, and put pressure on Mr. de Blasio 
to make it happen. 
Under the City Charter and state law, however, the decision to fire Officer Pantaleo ultimately belonged to 
Commissioner O'Neill, not the mayor. 
Speaking to reporters at Police Headquarters, Mr. O'Neill said he had tried to be fair and impartial and to make 
the decision without regard to political considerations. He noted that Mr. Pantaleo had been sent to arrest Mr. 
Gamer as part of an effort to stop drug dealing and other crime around Tompkinsville Park on Staten Island. 
Mr. O'Neill said had he been in Mr. Pantaleo's place, he might have made the same mistakes, and that Mr. 
Gamer set the tragedy in motion by resisting arrest. Still, the commissioner said, Mr. Pantaleo did not relax his 
grip on Mr. Gamer's neck after the men fell to the ground, and his recklessness triggered a fatal asthma attack. 
The commissioner also acknowledged many rank-and-file officers would be angered by his decision, noting he 
had been a police officer for decades before becoming commissioner. "If I were still a cop, I would probably be 
mad at me," he said. 
Daniel Pantaleo, N.Y.P.D. Officer in Eric Gamer's Death, Should Be Fired, Judge SaysAug. 2, 2019 
Beyond the Chokehold: The Path to Eric Gamer's DeathJune 13, 2015 
A Staten Island grand jury and federal civil rights prosecutors declined to bring criminal charges against Officer 
Pantaleo, igniting protests. 
Besides Officer Pantaleo, Mr. Gamer's family has pointed out that there are at least 11 other officers who should 
be held accountable for their actions leading up to Mr. Gamer's death and the aftermath. Only one — Sgt. Kizzy 
Adonis, who was the first supervisor to arrive on the scene — faces discipline. 
Officer Pantaleo's lawyer, Stuart London, was expected to challenge the decision in court. Mr. London and the 
Police Benevolent Association have long accused Mr. de Blasio of sacrificing Officer Pantaleo to satisfy public 
anger that threatens the mayor's political ambitions. 
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Officer Pantaleo had been suspended without pay since Aug. 2, when a department judge, Deputy Commissioner 
Rosemarie Maldonado, found him guilty of reckless assault following an administrative trial at Police 
Headquarters. 
Perhaps more than anything, Officer Pantaleo's departure signaled the city's pivot from depending on aggressive 
enforcement of low-level offenses to fight overall crime to relying on officers' problem-solving skills and their 
ability to build mutual trust with residents. 
Commissioner O'Neill designed the current crime-fighting strategy, called neighborhood policing, in his 
previous role as chief of department and has said he wants it to be his legacy. 
In 2014, police supervisors on Staten Island targeted Mr. Gamer for arrest in response to orders from 
headquarters to address neighborhood complaints about people illegally selling untaxed, loose cigarettes. 
The directive was part of the broken-windows policy championed by Commissioner O'Neill's predecessor, 
William J. Bratton, which relied on cracking down on activities that police believed diminished the quality-of-
life in order to prevent serious crime. 
Judge Maldonado affirmed in her 46-page decision what many people, including federal prosecutors, believe the 
video plainly showed: Officer Pantaleo's initial grip on Mr. Gamer slipped as the two men grappled and became 
a chokehold, which the department banned two decades ago. 
Judge Maldonado said in her report that the video of the July 17, 2014, encounter and an autopsy that found 
fresh hemorrhaging in Mr. Gamer's neck muscles provided "overwhelming" evidence that Officer Pantaleo had 
used a chokehold in spite of being trained not to. 
Officer Pantaleo's "use of a chokehold," she wrote, "fell so far short of objective reasonableness that this tribunal 
found it to be reckless — a gross deviation from the standard of conduct established for a New York City police 
officer." 
The judge also found Officer Pantaleo was untruthful when he later denied to Internal Affairs investigators that 
he had used a chokehold, saying his explanation was "implausible and self-serving." 
Read the Judge's Opinion 
Rosemarie Maldonado, a deputy commissioner for the New York Police Department, recommended after a 
departmental trial that Officer Daniel Pantaleo be fired for the 2014 death of Eric Gamer. 
46 pages, 4.15 MB 
But, like the local grand jury and federal prosecutors before her, she did not find evidence that the chokehold was 
intentional. 
The city's largest police union criticized the decision as "pure political insanity." Mr. Lynch said that if O'Neill 
adopted the judge's recommendation, he would "lose his Police Department." 
U.S. Prisons Chief Removed in Wake of Epstein Suicide 
WSJ 
By Sadie Gurman 
8/19/19 
The acting chief of the federal Bureau of Prisons has been ousted from his post following the suicide of 
disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a New York detention facility as he faced sex-trafficking charges. 
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Hugh Hurwitz, who had been serving as the head of the federal prison system on a temporary basis since May 
2018, was reassigned to a different post, Attorney General William Barr announced Monday. The leadership 
changes come more than a week after Mr. Epstein hanged himself at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in 
Manhattan, where Mr. Barr has said investigators uncovered "serious irregularities." 
The two staffers responsible for guarding Mr. Epstein's jail unit the night of his death have been placed on leave, 
and the jail's warden was temporarily moved to an office assignment. Federal investigators are probing whether 
the two staffers falsified records that logged how often they were checking on him, according to people familiar 
with the matter. 
Kathleen Hawk Sawyer, who led the agency from 1992 to 2003, will return to again be the BOP's director, Mr. 
Barr said. He had appointed her to the post when he previously was attorney general in the 1990s. Another 
longtime prisons official, Thomas Kane, who held multiple senior roles at the agency before his departure in 
2018, will return as the bureau's No. 2 official, Mr. Barr said. 
Mr. Hurwitz will return to his previous role working in prisoner re-entry, where Mr. Barr said he would help in 
implementing a sweeping criminal justice overhaul that President Trump signed into law last year. 
Mr. Epstein's death laid bare a prison system beset by staffing shortages and other problems. Jail officials had 
told the Justice Department that they would monitor Mr. Epstein every 30 minutes and keep him with a cellmate 
at all times, protocols that weren't followed in the hours before his death. 
Early findings by authorities indicated Mr. Epstein hanged himself by using his bed sheet, according to people 
familiar with the investigation. Authorities believe he tied the bed sheet to the top bunk of his bunk bed and then 
knelt forward to the floor, one of the people said. 
The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department's inspector general launched investigations into 
his death. Senior Justice Department officials also visited the detention facility last week. 
The shakeup comes after the Bureau of Prisons was already under scrutiny following the October death of 
gangster James "Whitey" Bulger, who was killed by fellow inmates in a West Virginia prison, according to law-
enforcement officials, where he had recently been transferred. 
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