Grand Jury Indicts Ramsey Orta (the Man Who Filmed Eric Garner), Not Daniel Panteleo - the Cop that choked out Eric Garner

Story by News One Now

Unlike in NYPD officer Daniel Panteleo’s case, a Staten Island grand jury panel was less sympathetic to Ramsey Orta, the man who filmed Eric Garner’s fatal police encounter.

A Staten Island grand jury Wednesday decided not to indict Pantaleo, who put Garner (pictured above right), an unarmed Black man, in a chokehold shortly before his death, the Huffington Post reports.

Nearly a month after filming the July 17 incident between the officer and Garner, who was accused of selling loose, untaxed cigarettes, a grand jury indicted Ramsey Orta on weapons charges that stemmed from an arrest by undercover officers in August.

Police charged that Ramsey Orta tried to conceal a .25 caliber handgun in the waistband of a teenage accomplice while standing outside a New York hotel, the news outlet writes. Ramsey Orta argued that the charges were trumped up by police as payback for his role in filming Garner’s death. The grand jury, however, rejected Ramsey Orta’s allegation, charging him with single felony counts of third-degree criminal weapon possession and criminal firearm possession.

In Panetaleo’s case, however, jurors decided there was not probable cause that the officer had committed a crime in Garner’s death. A medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, resulting in part from the chokehold, a restraining move banned by the NYPD in 1993.