Black Buffalo police officer reportedly fired for stopping colleague’s chokehold wins pension lawsuit

Cariol Horne, a Black police officer in Buffalo, New York, who was fired in 2008 for intervening when a White colleague exerted a chokehold will be given back pay and a pension, a judge ruled.

The former black Buffalo police officer was fired following a 2006 incident in which she tried to stop an officer from using a chokehold on a handcuffed suspect.

Horne served on the Buffalo police force for 19 of the 20 years required to receive a pension.

“The message was sent that you don’t cross that blue line and so some officers — many officers don’t,” Horne said in a 2020 interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar.

“I had five children and I lost everything but [the suspect] did not lose his life,” Horne said then. “So, if I have nothing else to live for in life, at least I can know that I did the right thing and that [he] still breathes.”

The ruling restored Horne’s pension and vacated an earlier court ruling upholding her dismissal.

“The legal system can at the very least be the mechanism to help justice prevail, even if belatedly,” Erie County Supreme Court Judge Dennis E. Ward wrote in his decision.

Ward referenced the cases of George Floyd — who died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on his neck for nearly nine and a half minutes — and Eric Garner— the New York man who died after being placed in a chokehold — among other alleged instances of excessive force by police.

“One of the issues in all of these cases is the role of other officers at the scene, and particularly their complicity in failing to intervene to save the life of a person to whom such unreasonable physical force is being applied,” Ward wrote.

Cariol’s Law

Ward also referenced Buffalo lawmakers who wrote a law obligating police officers to intervene in instances of excessive force and named the legislation after Horne called “Cariol’s Law”. In so doing, Ward wrote, the city “has thus already determined that Officer Horne intervened to save the life of a civilian.

During the hearing Horne addressed the court decision in a statement issued through her attorney.

“My vindication comes at a 15 year cost, but what has been gained could not be measured,” she said. “I never wanted another Police Officer to go through what I had gone through for doing the right thing.”

She also implored lawmakers nationwide to pass similar legislation to Buffalo’s “Cariol’s Law,” which obligates officers to intervene and seeks to legally protect those who do.