Ramsey Orta, Who Filmed The Police Killing Of Eric Garner, Released From Prison
June 9, 2020, 3:53 p.m.
Orta was serving time for a gun possession charge that he said was set up by the police.
The man who filmed police officer Daniel Pantaleo fatally choking Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014 has been released from prison.
Ramsey Orta had been serving a four-year sentence on gun charges, stemming from an arrest just a month after Orta filmed Garner's death in July 2014.
His video, which showed Garner—who was targeted by police for allegedly selling loose cigarettes—repeatedly saying, "I can't breathe," struggling in the chokehold before dying. Those words have become a haunting slogan in the Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality and anti-black racism.
Police claimed that Orta was caught hiding a gun with a 17-year-old girl, charges that Orta denied.
Orta said he was set up by police as revenge for filming Garner and the aggressive NYPD officers. He told the Verge in 2019, “Look, the point is, I’m smart about certain things. I’ve been on the streets doing my dirt for a long time. So you have to understand how ridiculous this gun charge is. There’s no chance I’m dumb enough to give a girl a gun out in the open like that. The cops had been following me every day since Eric died, shining lights in my house every night. You think I’m walking around with a stolen gun that now they say wasn’t even loaded?"
Orta was sentenced in 2016, but his fiancee "confirmed the news [of his release] to Rolling Stone via email; a Department of Corrections and Community Supervision spokesperson also confirmed his release. His prison sentence is officially over on July 11th; after that, Orta will remain under court supervision until January 2022," according to Rolling Stone.
Pantaleo remained a police officer on salary until 2019, when a secretive department trial took place and a judge found his claims of defense "self-serving" and "untruthful." The NYPD fired him in August 2019, five years after Garner's death.