The New York Police Department’s plainclothes anti-crime unit has been disbanded, the department announced on Monday.
The citywide unit was comprised of roughly 600 officers tasked with removing illegal guns from the streets, NBC News reported.
The change represents “a seismic shift in the culture of how the NYPD polices this great city,” Commissioner Dermot Shea said at a news conference on Monday.
“I would consider this in the realm of closing the last chapters of stop, question and frisk,” he said.
Daniel Pantaleo, a member of the unit, in 2014 used a chokehold on Eric Garner, a black man who died shortly afterward. The Justice Department opted not to charge Pantaleo last year. Weeks later, however, Pantaleo was fired from the New York Police Department.