A former Buffalo police officer who said she was fired for intervening when a white officer tried to suffocate a black suspect will receive her pension after winning a lawsuit on Tuesday. The New York State Supreme Court released a previous ruling confirming the dismissal of Cariol Horne, reports WIVB-TV, a CBS Buffalo subsidiary.
In his ruling, Judge Dennis Ward wrote that “the city of Buffalo has recognized the mistake and recognized the need to undo an injustice of the past. The legal system may, at the very least, be the mechanism to help prevail. justice, even if it is late. ”
“While the Eric Garners and George Floyds of the world never had a chance to do an‘ over-over, ’at least here the correction can be made,” Ward wrote.
Horne gained national attention in 2006 when he said he stopped Greg Kwiatkowski’s job at Neal Mack.
“Neal Mack looked like he was about to die,” Horne said “CBS This Morning” in an interview in 2020. “So if he hadn’t intervened, he possibly could have done it. They were handcuffed and drowned.”
She was finally fired in 2008, a few months before she was eligible to receive her full pension.
Kwiatkowski sued Horne and his lawyer for defamation. In 2011, a judge found that Horne’s lawyer made eight statements that were considered defamatory and false, including the claim that Horne “saved the life of a suspect who was already handcuffed and that Officer Greg Kwiatkowski was suffocating him. ”
But Mack claims Horne saved his life.
“He drowned me. They handcuffed me. Cariol Horne said, ‘You’re killing him, Greg,’ and she came over and tried to grab his hand by the neck,” Mack told CBS This Morning. last year.
Mack sued five officers involved in his arrest in 2012. A jury found no offense in a 5 to 1 sentence. The jury that sided with Mack was the only black person on the jury, Buffalo News reports. .
In 2018, Kwiatkowski was sentenced to four months in federal prison for a 2009 incident in which he used “illegal and unreasonable force” against four black teenagers, including stabbing him in the head in a car. Ward said the knowledge was not made available during “the original determinations in this case, both by the hearing officer and by this court.”
“Similarly, society’s current view on the use of suffocation and physical force in making arrests along with the City of Buffalo’s expression of specific disapproval of that force through enactment legislative, has altered the landscape, ”Ward added.
Horne is eligible for pay and benefits through August 4, 2010.