BREAKING: BRAVO!!! Cariol Horne forcibly removed a white officer and traded blows with him after he put a black man, who was handcuffed, into a chokehold. 15 years later, a judge said her firing was wrong.
Notice a black woman veteran save a black life she was scorned and spit out like trash and it cost her the pension she deserved, Protect the blue wall at all cost. Sometimes you have bad police who get a rush from harming black bodies. It is clear to me. But it is not clear to the world. Black people for the most part are no more violent than Joe in the burbs people we are no nobler than white people. Some of us have real flaws. But black people are more resilient we face our flaws and we rise like the heroes we are when we tap into our best self. Are black people perfect? No, only Jesus was perfect that is it. But as a whole, we are great people with great integrity and we are waiting for our white friends to rid this country of racism it has nothing to do with us. It is up to future generations to say enough is enough. I remember back in the day an article I read with a white man went to his son’s and daughter’s room and saw Prince and Micheal Jackson on their walls and he was upset that these black men were being celebrated and it concerned him. So black people did not have a hero on a screen at a large scale like Black Panther. And this is why that was important. Black children prefer the white doll to the black one this is so sad. It’s up to you white America. You want this country to be on the right side of history step up white America. If it gets better for black people it will get better for all people in America. Cariol Horne was a hero then and now. She took the blow and did the right thing and she lost her pension in the process. I hope they give her her back pay now and damages. Take the blue wall down we need real men with real integrity that want to protect and serve our country. The cool thing is she will be receiving her back pay for 15 years and her pension. Doing the right thing paid off.
“The legal system can at the very least be a mechanism to help justice prevail, even if belatedly,” the judge, Justice Dennis E. Ward, wrote.
His ruling also invoked the deaths of Mr. Floyd and Eric Garner, a Black man from Staten Island whose dying words — “I can’t breathe” — have become a national rallying cry against police brutality.
“The time is always right to do right,” added Justice Ward, of State Supreme Court in Erie County, paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In a statement, Cariol Horne, 53, celebrated the decision.
“My vindication comes at a 15-year cost, but what has been gained could not be measured,” she said. “I never wanted another police officer to go through what I had gone through for doing the right thing.”
A lawyer for the white officer, Gregory Kwiatkowski, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for Buffalo’s mayor, Byron Brown, said the city had “always supported any additional judicial review available to Officer Horne and respects the court’s decision.”
2006 encounter that led to Cariol Horne’s firing began as a dispute between a woman and a former boyfriend whom she had accused of stealing her Social Security check. When officers tried to arrest the former boyfriend, the situation turned violent.
Cariol Horne said she saw Officer Kwiatkowski put the man in a chokehold. Officer Kwiatkowski said he had grabbed him around the neck and shoulders in “a bear hug headlock from behind,” according to court documents. In Officer Kwiatkowski’s telling, Ms. Horne struck him in the face, pulled him backward by his collar, and jumped on him.
An internal investigation cleared Officer Kwiatkowski of all charges; Ms. Horne was offered a four-day suspension, which she turned down. After hearings in 2007 and 2008, the Police Department found that her use of physical force against a fellow officer had not been justified.
She was fired in May 2008. Officer Kwiatkowski was promoted to lieutenant the same year.
“Her conduct should have been encouraged and instead she was fired,” W. Neil Eggleston, a lawyer for Ms. Horne, said in an interview.
The dispute between Ms. Horne and Officer Kwiatkowski did not end when she left the Police Department. He sued her for defamation and won a $65,000 judgment against her. White men always win against black people.
Officer Kwiatkowski’s own police career ended under a cloud. He retired in 2011 while facing an internal affairs investigation and he was indicted the next year on federal civil rights charges stemming from the arrest of four Black teenagers. He ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison.
After she was fired, Cariol Horne worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver, and sometimes lived in her car, The Buffalo News reported. The death of Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis, where former Officer Derek Chauvin is now on trial for murder in the killing, brought new attention to her case and the circumstances surrounding it. (Three other officers who were present when Mr. Floyd died were also charged in the killing.
The Buffalo Police Department had adopted such a rule in 2019, and last fall the council approved what it called “Cariol’s law” by a vote of 8 to 1.
Darius G. Pridgen, the council president, said a confluence of factors — including Ms. Horne’s advocacy from firsthand experience and the increased scrutiny on police misconduct in the wake of Mr. Floyd’s death — had created an environment for action.
“During the protests, we were trying to reach for ways to hold bad police officers accountable,” Mr. Pridgen said. After the killing of Mr. Floyd and the demonstrations that followed, he said, “the timing was perfect.”
The law also gives officers who have been terminated in the past 20 years for intervening to stop the use of excessive force a chance to challenge their firings. In an unusual twist, Ms. Horne’s suit cited the law named for her to argue for that outcome.
Ms. Horne’s lawyers said that although she had been fired for wrongfully intervening in an arrest, her actions had been consistent with what is expected of police officers: She had kept a civilian safe.
“And after George Floyd,” Mr. Eggleston, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama, said, “we really understand what happens if officers don’t act like that.”