Black cop fired for stopping white officer who had suspect in chokehold

An investigation has been launched into the case of a black officer who intervened after a white colleague put a suspect in a chokehold.

The incident took place in November 2006 when former Buffalo police officer Cariol Horne saw one of her white colleagues choking a black man.

Horne explained that she told her colleague to stop at the time, pulling his arm away from the black man. He then accused her of jumping on him, despite her attempting to regain control of the situation.

During an independent arbitration, Horne was not backed by the other officers who witnessed the alleged incident, and it was not caught on camera.

NBC News reports that Horne lost her job two years later after it was claimed that she put her fellow officers' lives at risk.

At the time, Horne had been a serving officer for 19 years and needed one more year of service to qualify for her pension, but because of the incident, she was unable to receive it.

After losing her job, Horne went on to become an activist, speaking out against police brutality. She has even attempted to pass legislation that would protect officers from being fired for attempting to intervene when they witness it.

Ten years after the incident, the white officer who choked the suspect, Gregory Kwiatkowski, was imprisoned for four months after he was convicted of using excessive force against four black teenagers.

But this week, the Buffalo Common Council submitted a resolution to the New York Attorney General's Office to re-examine Horne's case.

Buffalo Common Council President Darius Pridgen told NBC News affiliate WGRZ: "Now with so much attention being on the present and what some officers have done negatively, it is very difficult for some people to move forward if we have not repaired the past."

The council said in its resolution: "There is a responsibility to propose special protections for individual police officers who intervene to protect citizens from excessive use of force situations involving their other officers."

Horne told CNN: "I don't want any officer to go through what I have gone through. I had five children and I lost everything but [the suspect] did not lose his life.

"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."

This comes as unrest continues to unfold across the US, as protests - some peaceful, some violent - are calling out the systemic injustices carried out against people of color, not least seen by the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor.

As well as a call for justice, these ongoing protests are also demanding an end to police brutality and the racism that is so deeply entrenched in America and the western world.

The message is simple: Black lives matter.

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