Court Vindicates Black Officer Fired for Stopping Colleague

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It was a cold November day in Buffalo, New York, when Officer Cariol Horne responded to a call for a colleague in need of help. What she encountered was a white officer who appeared to be “in a rage” punching a handcuffed Black man in the face repeatedly as other officers stood by.

Horne, who is Black, heard the handcuffed man say he could not breathe and saw the white officer put him in a chokehold. At that point, court documents show, she forcibly removed the white officer and began to trade blows with him.

In the altercation’s aftermath, Horne was reassigned, hit with departmental charges and, eventually, fired just one year short of the 20 on the force she needed to collect her full pension. She tried, and failed, more than once to have the decision reversed as unfair.

On Tuesday, in an outcome explicitly informed by the police killing of George Floyd, a state court judge vacated an earlier ruling that affirmed her firing, essentially rewriting the end of her police career, and granting her the back pay and benefits she had previously been denied.

“The legal system can at the very least be a mechanism to help justice prevail, even if belatedly,” the judge, Justice Dennis E. Ward, wrote.

His ruling also invoked the deaths of Floyd and Eric Garner, a Black man from Staten Island whose dying words — “I can’t breathe” — have become a national rallying cry against police brutality.

“The time is always right to do right,” added Ward, of the state Supreme Court in Erie County, quoting Martin Luther King Jr.

In a statement, Horne, 53, celebrated the decision.

“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.”

A lawyer for the white officer, Gregory Kwiatkowski, did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Buffalo’s mayor, Byron Brown, said the city had “always supported any additional judicial review available to Officer Horne and respects the court’s decision.”

The 2006 encounter that led to Horne’s firing began as a dispute between a woman and a former boyfriend whom she had accused of stealing her Social Security check. When officers tried to arrest the former boyfriend, the situation turned violent.

Horne said she saw Kwiatkowski put the man in a chokehold. Kwiatkowski said he had grabbed him around the neck and shoulders in “a bear hug headlock from behind,” according to court documents. In Kwiatkowski’s telling, Horne struck him in the face, pulled him backward by his collar and jumped on him.

An internal investigation cleared Kwiatkowski of all charges; Horne was offered a four-day suspension, which she turned down. After hearings in 2007 and 2008, the Police Department found that her use of physical force against a fellow officer had not been justified.

She was fired in May 2008. Kwiatkowski was promoted to lieutenant the same year.

“Her conduct should have been encouraged, and instead she was fired,” W. Neil Eggleston, a lawyer for Horne, said in an interview.

The dispute between Horne and Kwiatkowski did not end when she left the Police Department. He sued her for defamation and won a $65,000 judgment against her.

Kwiatkowski’s own police career ended under a cloud. He retired in 2011 while facing an internal affairs investigation and was indicted the next year on federal civil rights charges stemming from the arrest of four Black teenagers. He ultimately pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four months in prison.

After she was fired, Horne worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver, and sometimes lived in her car, The Buffalo News reported. The death of Floyd in Minneapolis, where former Officer Derek Chauvin is now on trial for murder in the killing, brought new attention to her case and the circumstances surrounding it. (Three other officers who were present when Floyd died were also charged in the killing.)

She filed a lawsuit seeking to vacate the firing, citing the case involving Floyd. Shortly before that, she and others in Buffalo had begun to press members of the city’s legislature, the Common Council, to pass a so-called duty-to-intervene law requiring officers to step in when one of their own used excessive force.

The Buffalo Police Department had adopted such a rule in 2019, and last fall the council approved what it called “Cariol’s law” by a vote of 8-1.

Darius G. Pridgen, the council president, said a confluence of factors — including Horne’s advocacy from firsthand experience and the increased scrutiny on police misconduct in the wake of Floyd’s death — had created an environment for action.

“During the protests we were trying to reach for ways to hold bad police officers accountable,” Pridgen said. After the killing of Floyd and the demonstrations that followed, he said, “the timing was perfect.”

The law also gives officers who have been terminated in the past 20 years for intervening to stop the use of force a chance to challenge their firings. In an unusual twist, the suit cited the law named for Horne to argue for that outcome.

Horne’s lawyers said that although she had been fired for wrongfully intervening in an arrest, her actions had been consistent with what is expected of police officers: She had kept a civilian safe.

“And after George Floyd,” Eggleston, a former White House counsel under President Barack Obama, said, “we really understand what happens if officers don’t act like that.”

Good. If cops are encouraged to not sit idle while their colleagues use force without justification that might contribute to reducing the number of use-of-force incidents for which justice must be sought. It's just a shame it took so long for her to finally be vindicated.

No one who saw the incident and none of the officers involved corroborated Officer Horne's story and there were several. It's interesting how these media pieces specifically leave out facts that potentially damage a favored narrative.

The difference today versus 2006 is that now skin color alone is used to determine guilt and motive even in the absence of evidence and corroborating witnesses.

Tell us what gives you this great insight compared to the people involved in reviewing the case? You have a nice conspiracy theory about why she was vindicated but absolutely nothing to support it beyond your own fixation that rears it's head in every thread on any adjacent topic.

The favoured narrative was the original one that they eventually were obliged to admit was incorrect. The thin blue line was broken.

Just google it and read. There was a woman involved and multiple other officers. None corroborated Horne's account. That's why Horne was fired. The NY Times of course doesn't mention it.

Horne may very well be correct. I don't know and am not making a judgement.

And if they've walked that back there's a good chance it's a thin blue line case and not just omg t3h woke made dem do it.

I'm not sure what you mean to be honest. If Cariol Horne is telling the truth, this goes pretty deep into the Buffalo police department with other officers covering things up. That might be the case but we have no evidence of that and facts still mater at least to me.

If we want to decide guilt based on skin color without evidence in the US, we are moving back to the pre-civil rights days.

We have no facts of it but then again they'd be embarrassed to be forced to admit it. That might be why they caved on all of the other stuff, if they had a case that she was in the wrong they would have made it and she wouldn't have gotten anything.

Cover-ups within police forces are nothing new. A police force having a sudden pro-black bias in a case where a cop was assaulted would be unheard of and we both know that's a fact.

All I'm saying is that when we hear hooves it's probably because of horses and not unicorns.

Police forces across the country are walking on eggshells attempting to do their jobs effective to serve and protect all people regardless of race. They are not perfect but in general they do a great job and deserve our respect.

I take it you're from Sweden. No American except an except a paid prostitute for the police can utter such blatant lies. The police in America act worse than the IDF soldiers in Israel, and this is coming from someone whose been to Palestine.

No one who saw the incident and none of the officers involved corroborated Officer Horne's story and there were several. It's interesting how these media pieces specifically leave out facts that potentially damage a favored narrative.

The difference today versus 2006 is that now skin color alone is used to determine guilt and motive even in the absence of evidence and corroborating witnesses.

Germany is the only place I've lived in Europe and that was only for a year when I was in uni. I grew up in the US and live there now. I spent much of my adult life living in Asia and S America. I've seen issues with police around the world but overall they are our heroes and selfless protectors.

I also used to run a defense industry company in Haifa, Israel and have been there many times. I have tremendous respect for the IDF. Israel wouldn't exist as a nation without them.

All people matter including Jews who continue to face an ongoing attempted genocide. The world is fortunate to have the IDF protecting them and preventing a genocide and world war. They deserve protection and deserve to live their own lives.