The city's Civilian Complaint Review Board investigated seven complaints against NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the five years before he was caught on camera wrapping his arm around Eric Garner's neck in a fatal 2014 arrest,according to summary disciplinary records published by a left-leaning website called ThinkProgress.
The records show that allegations in two of those cases were substantiated. Pantaleo had more complaints and cases with substantiated allegations than most other officers, according to CCRB data. Only 2 percent of active officers have two or more cases with a substantiated allegation, and the data shows.
Pantaleo was a member of an anti-crime unit and made more arrests than most other cops,so it's not entirely surprising he'd be at the upper end of civilian complaints. Section 50a of the state civil proper law makes police disciplinary records confidential so unless more information leaks out there's no way to know the details of the cases.
A spokeswoman for the Civilian Complaint Review Board declined to comment.
The Patrolmen's Benevolent organization released a statement from union president Patrick Lynch:
"The leak of such information is simply another demonstration of the CCRB’s inability to function in the honest and neutral manner prescribed by the City constitution. It is an agency that actively solicits complaints, places pressure on citizens to continue questionable claims and presides over a system that encourages the pursuit of false, or unsworn allegations. Their ineptness is well documented and well known and renders virtually any information released or leaked by the agency as meaningless. Nonetheless,the release of confidential records in this or any case may have criminal implications and must be fully investigated."
Source: wnyc.org