Eric Garner and the NYPD’s History of Deadly Chokeholds
Even with the NYPD’s history of killing people with chokeholds that violate policy, hundreds of non-lethal violations of that policy every year, indisputable video evidence of multiple officers blithely ignoring the fact that a colleague was violating that policy, and their subsequent dishonesty about the chokehold when filing a report on the incident, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton still had the brass to say earlier this year that “he would not support a law to make chokeholds illegal, insisting that a departmental prohibition is enough.” He also said, “I think there are more than sufficient protocols in place to address a problem.” In context, that’s sufficiently absurd to cast a shadow over the man’s honor. It’s hard to believe it won’t come up when New York City is sued for negligence.
At minimum it undermines Bratton’s credibility. “Every time this happens,” Hamilton Nolan observes, “there’s a lot of talk about ‘training’ and ‘changing the culture’ of the police.” Yet chokeholds persist. “What will change this situation,” he adds, “is putting police officers in jail for killing and abusing people. And it’s abundantly clear that our current laws are too lax to accomplish that. The laws need to change.”
My emphasis added.
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