Len Levitt

He cited Officer Daniel Pantaleo’s exemplary record, which includes 289 arrests. He said the 13-year veteran of the NYPD had effected a lawful arrest in Staten Island in July 2014, and that Eric Garner repeatedly resisted. And he acknowledged that as a cop, he himself “may have made a similar mistake.” Yet, in the end, Police Commissioner James O’Neill showed Pantaleo no mercy.

Anyone who doubts that race, poverty and policing drive the city’s criminal justice system might examine the case of Karina Vetrano. Vetrano, a 30-year-old white woman from Queens, was beaten to death in May 2016 in Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach. Six months later, police charged Chanel Lewis, a black man from Brooklyn, with her murder. Police say his DNA matched that found on Vetrano and on her cellphone at the crime scene and that he confessed to killing her.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown did not attend the news conference at Police Plaza last week with Commissioner James O’Neill to announce the indictments of a retired vice squad detective and his wife, seven NYPD cops and nearly three dozen civilians regarding a gambling and prostitution ring in three counties. “The judge,” as Brown is known, is 86 and doesn’t travel well anymore, but there is nothing wrong with his brain.