Cariol Horne: Ex-Buffalo Police Officer Cleared 15 Years Later

BUFFALO, NY — When former Buffalo police officer Gregory Kwiatkowski was "in a rage," seen choking an unarmed and handcuffed Black suspect, his colleague, 19-year veteran officer Cariol Horne, stepped in.

Things could have been worse for the suspect, Neal Mack, had it not been for Horne, who stopped the attack and fought off Kwiatkowski in the Nov. 1, 2006 incident on Walden Avenue in Buffalo.

Horne, who is Black, told CBS-New York years later she jumped in because Mack “looked like he was about to die.”

“So had I not stepped in, he possibly could have. He was handcuffed and being choked,” she said.

An internal investigation found Kwiatkowski, who is white, did nothing wrong. But Horne, just one year from retirement, was quickly reassigned, charged with departmental violations and eventually fired. She was offered a four-day suspension, but turned it down.

Just this week, as a white former cop some 1,000 miles to the west faces a murder charge in the death of George Floyd, Horne has been vindicated.

A New York state court judge on Tuesday vacated an earlier ruling that affirmed Horne's firing, The New York Times and others have reported.

“The legal system can at the very least be a mechanism to help justice prevail, even if belatedly,” Justice Dennis E. Ward, who made the decision that will allow Horne to seek the full pension she lost due to her firing, wrote.

For Horne, it's justice that comes nearly 15 years later.

"I never wanted another police officer to go through what I had gone through for doing the right thing," Horne said in a statement to The Buffalo News and other media outlets.

Richard S. Sullivan Jr. of Harvard Law School, Horne's attorney in the case, said his client "saved a life" when she intervened in the incident involving Kwiatkowski and Mack.

"And history will now record her for the hero she is," Sullivan said in The Buffalo News report.

"This is a significant step in correcting an injustice that occurred 15 years ago when Officer Cariol Horne intervened to protect an unarmed civilian."

Attorneys for Kwitakowski haven't responded to requests for comment on the Horne situation.

Although Kwitakowski was promoted to lieutenant shortly after the 2006 incident involving Horne, his time on the force would eventually come to an end as he was sentenced to four months in prison for a 2009 incident in which he admitted, according to The Buffalo News, he "lost control" of himself in slamming the heads of four teenage suspects in a BB-gun incident into a police car.

Ward's ruling doesn't mean Horne is a police officer again, but does vacate her termination and makes clear she should have been allowed to continue on the force until the 20-year mark that would have allowed her to collect a full pension years ago.

The now-vindicated Horne has remained at the forefront of the fight against racial injustice.

She's been a fixture at Black Lives Matter rallies in Buffalo over the past year, according to The Buffalo News. During one rally, she appeared on CNN wearing a "George Floyd needed Cariol Horne" T-shirt.

Her activism has led to the adoption of "Cariol's Law" in Buffalo, which makes it a crime for a police officer to not intervene when another officer is using excessive force.

"The battle is not over," she told The Buffalo News, adding that she'd like the law to be adopted nationally.