New York Times – by J. DAVID GOODMAN and AL BAKER
Last year, a police oversight board substantiated six complaints by people who said New York City officers had restrained them with a chokehold, a banned maneuver that was used by an officer in the fatal encounter with Eric Garner on Staten Island in July.
The number, while small, is a notable increase. From 2009 to 2013, the oversight agency, the Civilian Complaint Review Board, substantiated a total of nine chokehold complaints.
The rise in verified chokeholds underscores a fact, tacitly acknowledged by police officials, that the move is used more than has been publicly known.
All but one of the six complaints — which came from encounters in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Upper Manhattan — were substantiated after the death of Mr. Garner. Last month, the board substantiated a seventh chokehold complaint.
In most substantiated chokehold cases, the review board has recommended that the police commissioner, who has final say, impose the stiffest form of departmental discipline, which can include suspension or termination. The board did so in five of the cases in 2014. But rather than severely penalizing officers who violate the ban, the Police Department has in recent years meted out little or no punishment.
In the aftermath of Mr. Garner’s death, top police officials are debating whether to go further and alter the ban to formally allow chokeholds in life-or-death situations.
At the same time, top officials are strongly considering eliminating the term “chokehold” from The Patrol Guide, the department’s internal rulebook, and replacing it with any “pressure on the neck,” said a police official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the discussions, over a variety of use-of-force policies, had yet to reach any conclusion.
“It was a poor choice of words when we put it out in 1993,” the official said. “It did not capture all the dangerous restraints around the neck.” Whether to adopt an exemption for cases where deadly force would be justified has yet to be presented to Commissioner William J. Bratton for a final decision.
The number of chokehold complaints filed with the board has remained relatively steady, with 222 last year compared with 179 in 2013 (and two substantiated) and 240 complaints in 2009 (and three substantiated). With little change in the number of complaints, the increase in those substantiated in 2014 pointed to changes in how the board evaluated such complaints under the leadership of Richard D. Emery, who was appointed as chairman on July 17.
“These new figures suggest that chokeholds have been an even more serious problem than we realized,” said Christopher T. Dunn, the associate legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.
In a report after Mr. Garner’s death, Mr. Emery said both the Police Department and the review board’s investigators had loosened their interpretation of the ban over time, changing the definition of a chokehold from force that may restrict breathing to a hold that actually did. The report found that, as a result, investigators missed some allegations of chokeholds and that even when it substantiated them, the department rarely imposed discipline.
Mr. Emery, who will convene a monthly board meeting on Wednesday, was traveling abroad and did not immediately return a call and an email seeking comment on Tuesday.
Mr. Garner’s death brought new scrutiny on the use of chokeholds, from Police Headquarters, the review board and the city’s new police inspector general.
Though the use of chokeholds by officers is banned by department policy, there is no law prohibiting it. A bill before the City Council, opposed by the mayor, would make the maneuver illegal.
Most of the seven substantiated cases involved complaints that were lodged before Mr. Bratton took over as commissioner last year.
In one possibility being explored by officials, chokeholds could be taught at the Police Academy and officers who use one against a suspect would have their actions reviewed, much like what happens after a police shooting.
The data on substantiated chokehold allegations comes from the review board’s monthly reports, which are stripped of all information about the officers involved besides their assigned precinct or the circumstances that led to the chokehold.
A spokeswoman for the board declined to comment or divulge details about the substantiated complaints or the officers involved, citing a frequently invoked clause in state law, Section 50-a of the Civil Rights Law, that protects the privacy of officers’ personnel records. Freedom of information advocates are lobbying the State Legislature to amend or repeal that section.
In 2014, the board fully investigated 127 allegations of an officer using a chokehold, up from 88 the year before and a similar number in 2011. (The agency’s ability to take complaints in 2012 was affected by Hurricane Sandy.)
Most substantiated cases eventually wind their way to the department’s trial room, in proceedings that are open to the public but whose transcripts have been kept secret by the city, which has cited the Civil Rights Law.
Mr. Bratton has said he would seek to speed the process, which has in the past taken years before a substantiated complaint reaches the commissioner’s desk.
Only one case, substantiated before he took over, has been decided during Mr. Bratton’s tenure: A plainclothes officer in Queens was found not guilty of using a chokehold during a struggle with a bicyclist.
We can always count on the New York Times to shift the debate to something inconsequential, like choke-holds, and how rare they are. It’s all part of their endless mission to keep the public misinformed.
This is NOT about choke-holds. It’s about the willful murder of an innocent man who was begging for his life when the sadistic, stinking pig bastards decided it would be more fun to just kill the son-of-a-bitch.