More than a decade after a black Buffalo police officer said she was fired for stopping a white colleague from choking an unarmed black suspect, a New York judge has ruled in her favor, saying she deserves to get her full pension and back pay.
For Cariol Horne, Tuesday’s decision came as a vindication after a 13-year legal battle with the City of Buffalo.
‘WE WON!!!’ a jubilant Horne wrote in all capital letters on her Facebook page.
Vindicated: A New York State Supreme Court judge has sided with former Buffalo police officer Cariol Horne by giving her a full pension. Horne was a 19-year veteran on the force in 2008 when she was fired for stopping a colleague from choking a suspect
Horne is pictured with Neal Mack, the man she said she saved from being chocked by her white colleague during his arrest in 2006
‘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,’ New York State Supreme Court Judge Dennis Ward wrote in his ruling
In his ruling, New York State Supreme Court Judge Dennis Ward vacated a previous ruling that upheld Horne’s 2008 firing, just a few months’ short of receiving her pension after nearly 20 years on the force.
The judge held that Horne is entitled to her pension, back pay for the period between 2008 and 2010, and benefits.
‘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,’ Ward wrote in his 11-page opinion, referring to the two black men whose deaths while in police custody sparked a national reckoning on systemic racism and excessive use of force.
‘My vindication comes at a 15 year cost, but what has been gained could not be measured,’ Horne said in a statement on Tuesday. ‘I never wanted another Police Officer to go through what I had gone through for doing the right thing.’
A spokesperson for the City of Buffalo released a statement in reaction to the ruling, which read: ‘the City has always supported any additional judicial review available to Officer Horne and respects the Court’s Decision.’
In 2006, Horne, then a veteran police officer in Buffalo, physically intervened to protect Neal Mack, a 59-year-old black man, after her white colleague Gregory Kwiatkowski put him in a chokehold.
Buffalo officer Gregory Kwiatkowski (left) had his hand around Mack’s neck (pictured as a young man, right) when Horne told him he was killing the suspect
‘I yelled, “Greg, you’re choking him,” and he didn’t stop,’ Horne recalled during an interview last year. ‘I grabbed his arm from around his neck …. That was the only physical contact that I had.’
Kwiatkowski, she said, responded by punching her in the face.
Two years after the incident, Horne, a mother of five, was fired without pension.
The police department claimed that Horne had put Kwiatkowski and other officers at risk, even though the suspect was handcuffed and unarmed at the time.
‘I lost everything,’ she said in an interview with CNN last year, ‘ but Neal Mac 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.’
Kwiatkowski, meanwhile, was promoted to lieutenant in 2008 and won a defamation lawsuit against Horne, from which Horne said he has collected $20,000.
Kwiatkowski later pleaded guilty to deprivation of civil rights and was sentenced to four months in federal prison for using excessive force against four black teenagers suspected of shooting a BB gun in 2009. Prosecutors said Kwiatkowski slammed the teenagers’ heads onto a car while yelling obscenities at them.
Horne has become an activist for social justice and police reform, and has been taking part in protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death
Since her firing, Horne has reinvented herself as an activist for social justice, and has been pressing for a new ‘Cariol’s Law,’ which would require officers to intervene if they see excessive force being used and protect them from retaliation. A registry of offenses would prevent violent officers from transferring among departments.
Buffalo adopted a version of Cariol’s Law, called ‘Duty to intervene,’ in October 2020.
In the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, where white cop Derek Chauvin pressed his knee into the man’s neck last May, Horne has been taking part in protests calling for police accountability.
Less than a month after Floyd’s death, the Buffalo Common Council asked State Attorney General Letitia James to conduct a new inquiry into Horne’s case.
