New York City Police Sgt. Kizzy Adonis, the only other cop officially implicated in the death of Staten Island dad Eric Garner, will lose 20 days of vacation for the role she played in the deadly police encounter five years ago.
On Wednesday, sources with the New York Police Department told the Staten Island Advance that Adonis pleaded guilty to departmental charges of failure to supervise the officers under command during the deadly arrest of Garner. In return, Adonis was docked 20 days of vacation and will not face a departmental trial.
“This disciplinary case was adjudicated,” NYPD Assistant Commissioner Devora Kaye confirmed to the Advance.
The news came two days after the NYPD announced it was firing Daniel Pantaleo, the cop who was found by the department to have put Garner into a chokehold while trying to arrest him July 17, 2014, for allegedly selling “loosies,” or loose, untaxed cigarettes. Garner died while repeatedly saying, “I can’t breathe.”
On the day of the arrest, Adonis, reports Eyewitness News ABC 7 New York, was a newly promoted sergeant who had just been assigned to the police precinct in the New York City borough of Staten Island on July 9, 2014. Cellphone footage of Garner’s arrest and subsequent death show her standing on the sidelines while Pantaleo and a group of other officers hold Garner down on the ground while Garner gasps for air, according to the New York Post.
Garner’s family and other advocates were outraged, calling Adonis’ punishment a slap on the wrist, if that.
“I am outraged and disgusted by how the [New York Mayor Bill] de Blasio administration and the NYPD continue to show that they don’t care about the murder of my son,” Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, said in a statement, CBS 2 New York reports.
She vowed to keep fighting for all involved in Garner’s death to be held fully accountable.
“We have other officers who we have to go after,” she said. “You have heard the names, we know the wrongdoing that they have done.”
Civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has supported the Garner family since the death of the 43-year-old, also expressed his disgust:
“The loss of vacation days is akin to no penalty at all. If the penalty for not doing your job is that you can keep doing your job, it is an injustice to the family of Eric Garner and the residents of New York City.”