Justice Department to conduct federal investigation into New York City chokehold death

It will be similar to a separate federal investigation already underway into the August 9 shooting death in Ferguson of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old. A county grand jury in that case decided against indicting the white officer, Darren Wilson.

Calling the death a “tragedy,” Holder said it was one of “several recent incidents that have tested the sense of trust that must exist between law enforcement and the communities they are charged to serve and protect.” The death occurred weeks before the deadly police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, a case also under investigation by the Justice Department and in which a local grand jury last week not issue an indictment.

The cases together have contributed to a national discussion about use of excessive force by police and their treatment of minorities.

“This is not a New York issue or a Ferguson issue alone,” Holder told reporters late Wednesday. “Those who have protested peacefully across our great nation following the grand jury’s decision in Ferguson have made that clear.”

Separately, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said he had spoken with Holder and Loretta Lynch, the U.S. attorney for the eastern district of New York who has been nominated as Holder’s successor, and was told that the federal investigation into the death will now move forward.

The federal investigation was announced hours after a New York grand jury chose not to indict Officer Daniel Pantaleo. The grand jury could have considered multiple charges, from murder to a lesser offense such as reckless endangerment, but Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan said jurors found “no reasonable cause” to bring charges. The Justice Department had been monitoring the outcome of the local investigation before announcing its own probe.

The federal investigation into the case will look for potential federal civil rights violations in Garner’s death, which led to demonstrations in New York.

To mount a prosecution in police misconduct cases, federal officials have to satisfy an extremely difficult legal standard — that the officer willfully violated a victim’s civil rights and used more force than the law allowed. That standard is the same in the Ferguson case as in the New York case, but there are important differences between the two, said William Yeomans, a former Justice Department civil rights official.

“One big difference, and one thing I think makes this an easier investigation is the existence of videotape,” Yeomans said. “We didn’t have that in Ferguson, and we would know much more about what happened in Ferguson if we had.”

He said that while he did not know all the facts in the case, an argument that the force was necessary seemed harder to reasonably make in Garner’s death.