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Cariol Horne files new lawsuit to restore her police pension

Mike Desmond / WBFO News

Cariol Horne, the namesake of a pending Buffalo law, filed a lawsuit Thursday in State Supreme Court against the City of Buffalo and the city's police department.

Horne maintains she intervened in November 2006, when she pulled fellow officer Greg Kwiatkowski off of a suspect being violently arrested during a domestic dispute. Horne was fired two years after the incident, a year short of serving the necessary 20 years to qualify for a full police pension.

She sued to be reinstated just after her firing in 2008, but the case was dismissed at that time. Her new lawsuit aims to restore her position as a police officer, with full payment of lost wages and benefits.

Former Buffalo Police Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson and then-Deputy Police Commissioner Byron Lockwood are named in Thursday's lawsuit filing.

On Tuesday, Buffalo's Common Council passed Cariol's Law, which will require police officers to intervene when unreasonable force is being used by another officer on a suspect. Mayor Byron Brown has said he would sign such a law, but others have vowed a legal challenge if the law is implemented.

Mark Wozniak, WBFO's local All Things Considered host, has been at WBFO since mid-1978.
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