The NYPD’s deputy commissioner for trials has spoken. Her recommendation is that Daniel Pantaleo, the police officer at the center of a five-year-long firestorm, should be fired. Rosemarie Maldonado handed her decision over to Police Commissioner James O’Neill for final determination. If he abides by her decision, Pantaleo’s firing would be a glaring miscarriage of justice.

Pantaleo, now 34, inadvertently became part of ground zero for the populist uprising of social justice activists during the summer of 2014. It was then that he was dispatched to a Staten Island street corner, directed to take a 43-year-old father of six, Eric Garner, into custody for selling single cigarettes from packs without a tax stamp, or “loosies,” outside a bodega.