NEW YORK -- New York City reached a settlement Monday with the family of Eric Garner, agreeing to pay $5.9 million to resolve the claim over his killing by the police last July on Staten Island, according to Jonathan Moore, a lawyer representing the family.
The agreement, reached days before the deadline to file suit in the death, was reached by the city comptroller, Scott Stringer, who has sought to settle major civil-rights claims even before a lawsuit is filed. Stringer has said the aim is to save taxpayers the expense of a drawn-out trial and to give those bringing the suits and their families a measure of closure.
Last year, Garner's relatives, including his widow, Esaw Garner, and his mother, Gwen Carr, filed a notice of claim seeking damages. Garner died July 17, 2014, after a police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, placed him in a chokehold during an arrest as other officers wrestled him to the ground. The confrontation was captured in a cellphone video taken by a bystander.
The medical examiner ruled the death a homicide, citing the chokehold and compression of Garner's chest by police. In December, a Staten Island grand jury declined to indict Pantaleo.
Military to review transgender ban
WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Ash Carter on Monday said the Pentagon's current regulations banning transgender individuals from serving in the military are outdated, and anyone willing to serve the country should be able to do so.
Carter is creating a working group to do a six-month study on the impact of lifting the ban. Carter said the group will begin with the presumption that transgender people should be able to serve openly.
The plan, which was first reported by The Associated Press, gives the services time to work through questions about health care, housing, physical standards, uniforms and costs associated with the change.
Pier victim's kin back prison plan
SAN FRANCISCO -- The parents of a woman fatally shot on a San Francisco pier said Monday in an interview that they support a proposal to give mandatory prison time to deported people who return to the U.S. illegally.
Kathryn Steinle, 32, was shot by a gun allegedly fired by Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, 45, a Mexican national who was in the country illegally. Lopez-Sanchez, who has pleaded innocent, had been released from jail months before the shooting, despite a federal immigration order asking local authorities to hold him.
Jim Steinle and Liz Sullivan of Pleasanton, Calif., were interviewed by Bill O'Reilly on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.
Steinle and Sullivan said the proposed "Kate's Law" would be a good way to keep her memory alive. O'Reilly is collecting signatures for a petition supporting the proposal, which would impose a mandatory five years in federal prison for people who are deported and return and 10 years for people caught a second time.
"We feel the federal, state and cities, their laws are here to protect us," Steinle said. "But we feel that this particular set of circumstances and the people involved, the different agencies let us down."
Sullivan said she hopes some good might come out of her daughter's death.
"You want to make it so much better for everybody in the United States that this, as you say, would never happen again," she said.
A Section on 07/14/2015