Maya Wiley says she’d have fired Pantaleo, but mayoral candidate emphasized ‘due process’ for NYPD in 2014
Mayoral contender Maya Wiley claimed Monday that if she had been mayor in the wake of Eric Garner’s death, she’d have fired Daniel Pantaleo, who remained with the NYPD years after his role in the caught-on-video killing.
But Wiley’s most recent remarks appear to be at odds with past statements she made on the case while working as Mayor de Blasio’s legal counsel.
Wiley — who also worked as an MSNBC commentator and the head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board before her run — appeared on her former television station Monday morning to highlight her police reform plan and the progressive stamp of approval she received this weekend from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
During a Q&A with former colleague, MSNBC commentator Rev. Al Sharpton, Wiley said that once the federal government’s civil rights probe of Pantaleo shifted from President Obama’s administration to President Trump’s she would have terminated Pantaleo’s employment with the city.
“If I had been mayor of New York City, as soon as there was a Donald Trump administration — and unfortunately the administration of President Barack Obama, who I support, had not gotten that case to a criminal prosecution in federal court for federal civil rights charges — Daniel Pantaleo would have been off the force,” she said. “I’m the only candidate in this race that has called for real police accountability.”
Wiley’s rivals have begged to differ, and an examination of her time with the CCRB reveals she took what some view as a more moderate tack. Her statement Monday also appears to contradict a seemingly more middle-of-the-road approach she took before joining the CCRB, just months after Garner’s death.
In a Dec. 2014 interview on NBC, Wiley, who was working as de Blasio’s legal counsel at the time, emphasized the importance of “due process” when talking about Pantaleo’s fate and said she thought it was “critically important … that there is a process underway now within the police department to look at his actions and evaluate whether or not there should be disciplinary action taken against him.”
“Immediately, he was off the streets and without a gun,” she continued. “It was an important signal to the community that we take very seriously both the desires to protect the rights of officers to be heard — there has to be due process — but that we will protect the public and the public trust at the same time.”
Her response did not include the fact that de Blasio, as mayor, could have had Pantaleo fired at any time after Garner’s death, albeit at the risk of being sued.
When asked about this later Monday afternoon, Wiley said there’s no divergence between what she said Monday and her 2014 remarks on NBC.
“There’s no contradiction here,” she said.
She noted that Pantaleo’s administrative case with the CCRB had been put on hold due to the federal probe being conducted by Obama’s Justice Department. Under Trump, Wiley said it became clear that his Justice Department wasn’t going to take police misconduct seriously.
“It was clear from every signal they were sending they weren’t going to take this case seriously,” she said. “We went through due process ... My point isn’t to bypass due process.”
When asked if, as mayor, she would have fired Pantaleo after seeing the video, Wiley didn’t say yes or no definitively, but noted she would have made sure the city reached a decision much more quickly on whether he got to stay with the NYPD.
“It would have happened very quickly,” she said.
But how Wiley handled the Pantaleo case in the early months of Trump’s presidency reveals that, at least in the beginning, she was content to take the same approach she did when Obama oversaw the Justice Department. During one March 2017 exchange at a CCRB meeting, Wiley acknowledged that “a hold” on the CCRB’s disciplinary proceeding was still in place due to the Justice Department’s probe — even though at that point, Trump controlled the DOJ.
“Yes. At this point; that’s correct,” she said at the time when asked about the hold.
A videotape of Garner’s death — which shows Pantaleo choking him and continuing to do so after wrestling him to the ground — has been viewed millions of times since the Daily News made it public in July 2014.
Wiley was working for de Blasio in 2014, so presumably she was following his lead at the time.
Wiley has sought to draw a sharp contrast between herself and more moderate candidates when it comes to police reform. She is one of three candidates favored by progressives, and the other two — Comptroller Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales — have been hampered, respectively, by allegations of sexual harassment and an insurrection among campaign staffers.
She also has taken credit for Pantaleo being drummed out of the NYPD. During her time at the CCRB, the board charged him, and the NYPD fired him.
But she’s suggested that the city could have done better when it came to Pantaleo.
“What we did when I chaired was sent the Daniel Pantaleo case, the officer who killed Eric Garner, over to the police department with our recommendation of charges,” she is quoted as saying on her campaign’s website. “Is that enough? No, we need to do much more. But that’s ultimately what got him off the force.”
The three candidates now leading in the polls — Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia and Andrew Yang — have all offered more moderate approaches on police reform.
Wiley, who has called for a $1 billion in NYPD funding to be cut, has been most strenuous in her attacks against Adams. She has been vocal in pointing out that he was once a Republican who showered praise on former Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the 1990s for the policing tactics he employed.
On Monday, she tagged Adams for saying on CNN that his policing plan “would look like what David Dinkins’ looked like,” even though back in the ′90s Adams derided Dinkins for being “too soft on crime.”
“He propped up Rudy Giuliani’s policing strategy and said David Dinkins was soft on crime,” Wiley campaign spokeswoman Julia Savel said in a written statement.
