The police officer who got fired for standing up to a bully cop just months before she was eligible for pension finally wins her 13-year-long legal battle.
Cariol Horne is a former Buffalo police officer who was fired in 2008 after stopping a fellow cop from choking a suspect, Neal Mack, who was placed in a chokehold by Gregory Kwiatkowski.
Recalling the incident last year, Horne said how she was worried that her colleague would kill the suspect if she didn’t intervene.
“I yelled, ‘Greg, you’re choking him,’ and he didn’t stop. I grabbed his arm from around his neck. That was the only physical contact that I had,” she said.
In 2008, two years after standing up to Officer Kwiatkowski, Horne was fired just months before she was eligible for pension after the Buffalo police ruled she endangered her colleagues by helping the suspect who was at the time of the chokehold already in handcuffs and unarmed.point 518 |
Kwiatkowski also won a defamation lawsuit against Horne that allegedly saw him compensated with $20,000.point 90 | 1
“I lost everything, but Neal Mack did not lost his life, so if I have nothing else to live for in life, at least I can know that I did the right thing,” Horne told CNN last year.
While Officer Kwiatkowski got promoted the same year Horne was sacked, he was later jailed for four months after using excessive force against four teens who were playing with a BB gun.
After getting sacked, Horne became an activist and a social justice warrior who launched a legal battle against the City of Buffalo. She also called for the implementation of Cariol’s Law, a modified version of which the City of Buffalo adopted last year, which calls for officers to intervene when excessive force is being used by their colleagues.
Now, Cariol Horne has also won a 13-year battle against the City after the New York State Supreme Court sided with her and ruled that she is entitled to a full pension and back pay for years 2008 to 2010.
“The City of Buffalo has recognized the error and has acknowledged the need to undo an injustice from the past. The legal system can at the very least be the mechanism to help justice prevail, even if belatedly,” New York State Supreme Court Judge Dennis Ward wrote in his ruling.
“While the Eric Garners and the George Floyds of the world never had a chance for a ‘do-over,’ at least here the correction can be done.”
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Replaced!