After five years of investigations and protests, Police Commissioner James O'Neill said he fired Daniel Pantaleo, who is white, based on a recent recommendation of a department disciplinary judge.
Maldonado felt Pantaleo's use of the move was reckless, writing that Pantaleo's "egregious misconduct led to the deadly consequences his training anticipated and which the prohibition was created to prevent".
Police believed Garner, a 43-year-old father of six, was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.
"While we will never be able to change the events that transpired or bring Mr. Garner back, today, some semblance of justice is finally being served", she said.
He spent five years on modified desk duty and received multiple pay raises, including a 14 per cent salary increase in 2016 to an annual total of just shy of $120,000 including overtime, according to the New York Daily News. Earlier this month, Pantaleo was suspended from the police department following a disciplinary trial judge's recommendation that he be fired.
Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of NY, responded to the decision by accusing O'Neill of choosing "politics and his own self-interest" over the interests of NYPD officers.
A lengthy Department of Justice review of the incident did not reach a conclusive determination of whether Pantaleo willfully committed misconduct, an "essential element" necessary to bring federal charges. The video showed him performing the maneuver he described, yet he answered that he "did not" use a chokehold.
Garner's death came at a time of a growing public outcry over police killings of unarmed black men that sparked the national Black Lives Mattermovement.
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"It is clear Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effectively serve as a New York City police officer".
"Make no mistake about it, this was a tragedy for the Garner family".
A state grand jury declined to indict on criminal charges but a civil rights investigation was launched in 2014.
Chokeholds have been banned by the NYPD since 1993.
Rather, she said, Pantaleo "knew of the grave risks associated with prohibited chokeholds, and that by using one under these circumstances, he engaged in a gross deviation from the standard of conduct established for a New York City police officer".
May 14, 2019: The NYPD official in charge of training recruits says the restraint technique Pantaleo used on Garner "meets the definition" of a chokehold.
Patrick J. Lynch, president of the Police Benevolent Association of the City of NY, issued a blistering statement after O'Neill's news conference, saying the commissioner chose to "cringe in fear of the anti-police extremists, rather than standing up for New Yorkers who want a functioning police department, with cops who are empowered to protect them and their families".
Pantaleo defined the action as a move where "you use your forearm, grasped with the other hand, and you pull back with your forearm onto the windpipe, preventing him from breathing".
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