Has policing changed since Eric Garner was killed? Here's what a decade of data shows.

Ten years ago today, video of an NYPD officer choking Eric Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk went viral, sparking a nationwide movement against police brutality and promises of reform by city and state politicians.

Since then, the video evidence that was somewhat novel in the Garner case has become commonplace. The city’s police watchdog agency now has access to video in fifteen times as many complaints of misconduct.

Even still, consequences for officers involved in a civilian death remain rare. Gothamist analyzed 10 years of data from the NYPD, the city’s police oversight agency, district attorneys' offices, police press conferences and news clips. Here are seven graphics that show a snapshot of police misconduct and accountability since Garner’s death.

New Yorkers are reporting that police use illegal chokeholds almost as often as they did 10 years ago.

The NYPD has banned chokeholds since at least 1993, when then-Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly instituted a policy he said was meant to clarify a 1985 order .

In 2014, New Yorkers made 244 complaints about chokeholds to the city’s police oversight agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, which investigates complaints of police misconduct and recommends officer discipline. Last year, there were 230 complaints about chokeholds, according to the CCRB data shared with Gothamist. The CCRB substantiated roughly 3% of those complaints.

Chokehold allegations dropped off significantly in the years after Garner was killed. Jill Snider, a former NYPD officer and current adjunct lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that’s because police acted with extra caution following Garner’s death.

“An officer's career was hanging in the balance, someone died and people were not very favorable to the police,” she added.

Now, as arrests for low-level crimes increase under Mayor Eric Adams, so have reports of chokeholds. Snider said the recent uptick in allegations does not necessarily reflect more illegal behavior by police. Snider said people don’t know the difference between an illegal chokehold and takedown maneuver tactics that police use during arrests.

From 2012 to 2022, Black New Yorkers were seven times more likely than white New Yorkers to be shot and killed by the NYPD.

Garner’s death, which was preceded by police officers alleging he was selling loose cigarettes, showed how the policing of low-level crimes can have deadly outcomes. The NYPD has made over 30,000 pedestrian stops under Adams, still a fraction of the roughly 700,000 stops the New York Civil Liberties Union estimated it made in 2011. Just 5% of the people stopped were white . During former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “stop-and-frisk” era, 9% of people stopped were white and 53% were Black

In 2022, NYPD officers were nearly twice as likely to use physical force while arresting a Black New Yorker than a white New Yorker, according to the department’s 2022 Use of Force report . The department has not yet published data from 2023.

When it comes to officers being involved in civilian deaths, the NYPD only publicly shares data on shootings — not beatings, asphyxiations, or fatalities from high-speed vehicle chases, among other causes. From 2012 to 2022, the NYPD was seven times more likely to shoot and kill Black New Yorkers than white New Yorkers, according to NYPD data.

More than 50% of fatal police shootings in the last decade took place in Brooklyn and the Bronx.

Gothamist tracked the GPS coordinates of every fatal police shooting in the last decade using NYPD press conferences and news clips.

NYPD officers shot and killed at least 95 New Yorkers while on duty in the last decade.

According to NYPD data and Gothamist research, police have shot and killed at least 95 people since 2014. Eight officers involved in those cases were fired, and three were criminally charged, according to prosecutors and Gothamist research.

In 2022, the last year the NYPD published its Use of Force report, police shot and killed 13 New Yorkers. The NYPD received 7.1 million calls for service in that year, of which just 0.1 %, or 8,270 incidents, resulted in the use of force, according to an NYPD spokesperson. The 13 people shot and killed by police that year each had a weapon that appearad capable of causing death or serious physical injury, the spokesperson wrote in a statement to Gothamist, adding that the department's policies on use of force are regularly evalyated.

Police have shot and killed nine people so far this year, according to Gothamist research. This count excludes a fatal shooting in New Jersey last month involving the NYPD, as it’s unclear which agency fired the fatal shot.

Earlier this year, NYPD Sgt. Erik Duran pleaded not guilty to charges brought by state prosecutors after he threw a picnic cooler at a man allegedly fleeing from police on a motorbike. That case is ongoing.

In 2017, Sgt. Hugh Barry was charged with murder after the high-profile killing of 66-year-old Deborah Danner, who’d long written about the challenges of living with schizophrenia and interacting with law enforcement. Barry was acquitted of all charges one year later.

In 2015, the Brooklyn district attorney charged NYPD Officer Peter Liang in the fatal shooting of Akai Gurley in November of the previous year. Liang was convicted of manslaughter, making him the first NYPD officer in more than a decade convicted for an on-duty killing. But a judge reduced his conviction moments before sentencing , skirting prison time.

He was sentenced to five years of probation and community service.

For its part, the NYPD fired Officer Daniel Pantaleo in the death of Eric Garner, and Liang and Landau in the fatal shooting of Gurley.

In the killing of Deborah Danner, NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Trials recommended that Barry be fired. But Police Commissioner Edward Caban modified the decision, forcing him instead to resign .

The city’s police oversight agency has pressed charges in four cases of a civilian death involving a police officer, according to a review of closed CCRB cases shared with Gothamist. Daniel Pantaleo was one. Another was an off-duty shooting, when NYPD Officer Wayne Isaacs shot and killed Delrawn Small in a 2016 road rage incident.

Isaacs still works for the NYPD under the department’s chief of special operations, according to public records.

The city’s police oversight agency has access to more video evidence than ever before.

Video evidence in these cases includes footage from police body-worn cameras, surveillance cameras and citizen videos.

It wasn’t until 2019 when the NYPD fully rolled out body-worn cameras across its police force. The department has distributed roughly 20,000 cameras .

“The Garner case really exemplifies how crucial video evidence can be,” CCRB Executive Director Jon Darsche told Gothamist.

In cases where body-worn camera footage was available, CCRB investigators reached a definitive conclusion 77% of the time, Darsche said. Without access to body-worn camera footage, they reached a conclusion just 25% of the time, he said.

Though CCRB reports say the agency is substantiating more complaints of officer misconduct thanks to video evidence, data shows it hasn’t resulted in more criminal prosecution or internal discipline of officers. The NYPD commissioner followed CCRB recommendations in just 55% of cases last year.

Correction: This story has been updated to correct that, in the last decade, the city’s police oversight agency has pressed charges four times in cases of a civilian death involving a police officer. After publication, the agency corrected the data provided to Gothamist.