Tag: chokehold
NYPD Inspector General’s Report Faults Discipline On Chokeholds

NYPD Inspector General’s Report Faults Discipline On Chokeholds

By Michael Muskal, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

New York police received little or no discipline from their superiors in ten recent case involving the use of the banned chokehold, the city’s first report by the Police Department’s inspector general said on Monday.

The report comes as the city continues to reel from the July death of Eric Garner, who was selling loose, untaxed cigarettes and was placed in a chokehold during a confrontation with police in Staten Island.

That incident touched off demonstrations and further strained relations between police and Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said he understood the frustration and worry behind the demonstrations that followed a grand jury’s decision in December not to charge the officers.

As a sign of their displeasure with City Hall, many police officers turned their backs on De Blasio during the funerals for officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, slain last month in Brooklyn. Police have also reportedly slowed down their enforcement of some minor laws such as summonses.

The inspector general’s office, headed by Philip Eure, was created last year by the City Council in response to complaints about how police enforced the stop-and-frisk policy, which critics alleged targeted blacks and other people of color. Then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and then-Commissioner Ray Kelly both opposed creating the office, but the council overrode Bloomberg’s veto.

Originally scheduled to be released last month, the report was pushed back after the two police officers were fatally ambushed in their patrol car by a man who said he wanted to kill police officers in the wake of the Garner case and the shooting of an unarmed black man in Ferguson, Mo., by a white police officer. Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley, the suspect in the Brooklyn cop shooting, killed himself moments after the attack.

The report looked at ten chokehold cases substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board between 2009 and 2014. The Garner case was not among those examined.

In four of the cases, police used chokeholds as a first act against citizens who had confronted them only verbally, not physically.

“While the substantiated use of prohibited chokeholds by members of the NYPD in any context is troubling, the fact that several of the subject officers in the 10 cases reviewed by OIG-NYPD used chokeholds as a first act of physical force and in response to mere verbal confrontation is particularly alarming,” the report stated.

“Rather than using communication skills and approved tactics to de-escalate tense encounters with members of the community, these officers immediately turned to a prohibited and dangerous physical act to try to control the situation,” the report said.

Department policy bans the use of the chokehold, which is defined as “any pressure to the throat or windpipe, which may prevent or hinder breathing or reduce intake of air,” according to the inspector general’s report. But the report found that “at least historically, the disciplinary process is complex, multi-tiered, and often delivers inconsistent results.”

In all ten cases the NYPD ignored the Review Board’s recommendations. In nine of the cases, the board recommended the toughest sanction possible, departmental charges. In every case the cop got lesser punishment ranging from no punishment to the loss of vacation days.

In six of the cases, Kelly imposed lesser punishments or none at all.

“The lack of transparency regarding the police commissioner’s disciplinary decisions in these cases deprives CCRB — and by extension the public — of an important window into how NYPD works and how it holds its officers accountable when they violate the rules,” the report said.

“Whether such data are indicative of a broader trend” will be studied further, along with effectiveness of police training including the instruction to “use minimum necessary force,” the report added.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Sheriff Deputies In King County, Wash., Train To Use Controversial ‘Blood Choke’

Sheriff Deputies In King County, Wash., Train To Use Controversial ‘Blood Choke’

By Jennifer Sullivan, The Seattle Times

SEATTLE — After a 10-year hiatus, King County sheriff’s deputies have resumed training to use a neck restraint considered by the department to be a suitable alternative to “less-than-lethal” options like Tasers and clubs.

The “lateral vascular neck restraint,” or LVNR, involves applying pressure to the sides of the neck, restricting blood flow to the brain. The restraint can render a suspect unconscious in moments without inflicting permanent injury, according to sheriff’s officials.

“It gives us another option on our use-of-force continuum,” said sheriff’s spokeswoman Sgt. DB Gates.

But neck restraints, when improperly applied, can have debilitating — even deadly — results, say critics. They cite the recent death of a man being restrained by New York City police — an incident caught on a widely viewed video — as evidence of the volatility of targeting the neck to subdue someone.

Because of that potential danger, Seattle police and the Washington State Patrol consider any neck restraint a type of lethal force, similar to a firearm. Officers with those agencies aren’t trained in neck restraints, and their use is limited to only when an officer believes his or her life is in danger.

“The only time you’re going to use it is when you know it’s going to cause great bodily harm. When you’re at that threshold, your options have been greatly diminished,” said Seattle police spokesman Sgt. Sean Whitcomb. “It’s something rarely used.”

Those divergent views are at the heart of the controversy over whether neck restraints — commonly referred to as chokeholds — should be among a police officer’s tools.

Trainers at the state police academy and an instructor for the King County Sheriff’s Office, say the LVNR poses no more of a threat of permanent injury than other methods of force considered nonlethal — like a Taser, club, or pepper spray.

LVNR is considered a “blood choke,” although officials at the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission stress it is not a chokehold because the airway is not cut off and arms, not hands, are used. Semantics aside, in blood chokes, both carotid arteries and/or the jugular veins are compressed without obstructing the airway.

An “air choke” refers to a neck hold in which the upper airway is compressed, causing pain and a lack of oxygen to the brain.

The reason the Sheriff’s Office stopped training deputies in LVNR about 10 years ago is unclear, although Sue Rahr, who was King County sheriff from 2005 to 2012, said there was no way to “guarantee it was applied properly.”

Rahr, now the executive director of the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission, which oversees the state’s police academy, said that the tactic, also known as the carotid hold, can be dangerous when done incorrectly.

“It’s a very, very good technique, but it has to be taught and practiced regularly. It’s perishable,” Rahr said.

Bernard Melekian, a California-based law-enforcement consultant and former police chief in Pasadena, said that over the past 20-plus years, reliance on such restraints “has gone up and down.”

In the 1980s, the Los Angeles Police Department prohibited the use of chokeholds, but it’s now training officers how to perform a vascular restraint hold. According to the New York Daily News, after the incident in New York City, the LAPD started training six NYPD officers in the technique.

Melekian, who is the special adviser to Seattle Mayor Ed Murray on police matters, believes the technique is having a resurgence because departments are looking for “meaningful alternatives to deadly force.”

“It is very effective. It, however, is not without risk,” he said. “The training and the policy development should be consistent and very specific.”

“The bottom line is it restricts blood flow to and from the brain, resulting in unconsciousness,” said Robert Bragg, head fitness trainer at the state police academy. If it’s done properly, Bragg said, a suspect will pass out within seconds, giving officers a brief window to clamp on handcuffs.

Demonstrating the LVNR technique in the police academy’s gym late last month, one trainer wrapped his arm in the shape of a “V “around a colleague’s neck. Using his forearm and upper arm, the trainer placed pressure on the sides of the other man’s neck, not the windpipe, and within a few seconds the officer was on the ground saying he was seeing stars.

Trainers at the academy say a vascular hold tends to be more of a deterrent. Often, when an officer wraps his arm around a suspect’s neck and threatens to apply pressure, the person gives up.

“You don’t win this one — you can tap out or go unconscious,” Bragg said. “You wake up feeling like you slept too long; you’re groggy.”

Deputy J. Miller, the force-options coordinator in the King County Sheriff’s Office training division, said the LVNR method is categorized as “intermediate force,” on the same level as a Taser, pepper spray, and a club.

“It’s imperative that it’s not taught as a physical technique, but a system of control. It’s about communicating. We give clear and concise instructions about what we need to do.”

Miller emphasizes that deputies are not rushing up behind people and performing the tactic without clearly announcing what they are doing.

“It’s a benefit to police officers and the public that police officers have another force option, as opposed to impact weapons. We can do this with less injuries,” Miller said.

Vascular-neck-restraint training is optional for the nearly 700 sheriff’s deputies. Gates said deputies not trained in LVNR cannot use the technique.

“It’s not like some training where you go, sit in a class, and you’re trained. You have to pass a test and stay current with your training. They have to recertify every year on it,” Gates said.

Bragg said he watched the video of NYPD’s confrontation last month with Eric Garner, who was allegedly hawking untaxed cigarettes on Staten Island. The video shows the heavyset man yelling at officers to leave him alone, followed by a plainclothes officer wrapping his arm around Garner’s neck, yanking him to the ground.

Garner is heard saying he couldn’t breathe. He was soon dead.

A medical examiner determined that Garner was killed by “the compression of his chest and prone positioning during physical restraint by police.” His death was ruled a homicide.

“It was a poorly applied chokehold. It was a lousy job of any neck restraint. We don’t train chokeholds,” Bragg said.

AFP Photo/Julia Xanthos

Interested in national news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!