Cariol Horne Will Receive Full Pension After State Supreme Court Decision

Spoiler alert: police departments don’t want “good apples”

Source: RyanJLane / Getty

Some of you may remember the story we posted years ago about Cariol Horne. She is the former Buffalo police officer who was fired in 2006 after she had the negro audacity to stop her lily-white partner from choking a Black suspect. Her unjust termination came into the national consciousness last year after she appeared on CBS This Morning and CNN to tell her story in the wake of the uprising surrounding police brutality.

“Neal Mack looked like he was about to die,” Horne told “CBS This Morning” in an interview in 2020. “So had I not stepped in, he possibly could have. He was handcuffed and being choked.”

Horne has been fighting for years to get her rightfully-earned pension from her former employer who barred her from receiving the funds as a result of her termination. But finally, after all these years, Cariol Horne is getting justice.

According to WIVB, the State Supreme Court vacated a previous ruling that upheld her firing and Judge Dennis Ward issued a new ruling that will grant her every red cent that that bacon-scented boys-in-blue owe her.

“While the Eric Garners and the George Floyds of the world never had a chance for a “do-over”, at least here the correction can be done.”

When Horne was fired it put her entire life into a tailspin. She lost her home and much more.

“I don’t want any officer to go through what I have gone through,” Horne said. “I had five children and I lost everything but [the suspect] did not lose his life. So, if I have nothing else to live for in life, at least I can know that I did the right thing and that Neil Mack still breathes.”

It will always be “f**k 12” but we are glad that perhaps the only “good apple” we’ve seen in recent years is a Black woman who finally got back what those white men stole from her.