A former Buffalo Police officer who said she was fired for intervening when a white officer attempted to strangle a black suspect will receive her retirement after winning a lawsuit on Tuesday. The New York State Supreme Court has cleared an earlier ruling upholding Cariol Horne’s resignation, reports CBS Buffalo affiliated with WIVB-TV.
In his ruling, Judge Dennis Ward wrote that “The City of Buffalo has acknowledged the error and the need to undo a past injustice. At the very least, the justice system can be the mechanism to help justice prevail, even when it’s too late. . ”
“While the Eric Garners and the George Floyds of the world have never had the chance for a ‘do-over’, at least the correction can be made here,” Ward wrote.
Horne got national attention in 2006 when she said she was holding back Officer Greg Kwiatkowski’s stranglehold on Neal Mack.
“Neal Mack looked like he was about to die,” Horne recalled “CBS This Morning” in an interview in 2020So if I hadn’t intervened, he might have. He was handcuffed and suffocated. ‘
She was finally fired in 2008, just months before she became eligible for full retirement.
Kwiatkowski sued Horne and her attorney for defamation. In 2011, a judge found that Horne’s attorney made eight statements that were considered defamatory and false, including the allegation that Horne had “saved the life of a suspect who was already handcuffed and suffocated by Officer Greg Kwiatkowski.”
But Mack claims Horne saved his life.
“He strangled me. I was handcuffed. Cariol Horne said, ‘You’re going to kill him, Greg,’ and she reached out and tried to grab his hand around my neck,” Mack told CBS This Morning last year.
Mack indicted five officers involved in his 2012 arrest. A jury found no wrongdoing in a 5-to-1 verdict. The jury member who sided with Mack was the only black person on the jury, the Buffalo News reports.
In 2018, Kwiatkowski was sentenced to four months in prison for an incident in 2009 in which he used “unlawful and unreasonable violence” against four black teens, including by hitting their heads in a car. Ward said the knowledge was not available during “the original findings in this case by both the hearing officer and this court.”
“Likewise, the current societal view of using chokeholds and physical violence in making arrests, along with the City of Buffalo’s expression of specific disapproval of such violence through legislative action, has changed the landscape,” Ward added.
Horne is eligible for back wages and fringe benefits until August 4, 2010.