Ten years after Eric Garner’s death, a look at police reform efforts

Eric Garner’s death at the hands of police and the protests that followed became a pivotal test for a new mayor, Bill de Blasio, who committed to police reform at the department he oversaw.

“In the last 10 years, we have seen a tremendous amount of effort put forth by the NYPD to try and go back to their roots of community oriented policing,” Jillian Snider, an adjunct lecturer at John Jay College, told NY1.

Snider was an NYPD officer at the time of Garner’s death and is now policy director of criminal justice and civil liberties at the R Street Institute.

She noted the creation of the Neighborhood Coordination Officer program, as well as fair and impartial bias training and de-escalation training for officers.

“I think de-escalation is a really good tool, because when I went through the police academy, we learned about it to an extent, but it was called verbal judo. We didn’t even use the real term de-escalation. Now we are being trained to deal with people on a level to bring it back down so that force does not need to be applied,” Snider said.

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The disciplinary action against both officers led to an outcry from police unions and threats of a work slowdown. 

“Knowing that an officer never goes out there looking for trouble, it was really upsetting. And I think morale suffered because of it,” Snider said.