What are chokeholds and can police use them? It depends what kind and where you live
The death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died in police custody, has led to national protests and the police use of chokeholds being brought to the public’s attention.
Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer, was shown on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than 8 minutes before he died. He was arrested Friday, according to the Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner.
Chauvin has been charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter, said John Harrington, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety.
Chauvin was also fired and Andy Skoogman, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police, said the hold that Chauvin used on Floyd isn’t taught in police training, Fox News reported.
“I think there’s a national narrative, or there had been last week, that police officers in Minnesota are being trained in the technique that Derek Chauvin used and that is simply not the case,” Skoogman said. “It is the furthest from the truth that that exists. We did condemn the actions of the officer, not only the technique used by Derek Chauvin but the lack of empathy shown by the other officers on the scene.”
Two types of chokeholds
There are two types of chokeholds used by police: a carotid restraint, known as the stranglehold, sleeper hold, or blood choke, which temporarily stops blood flow to the brain and renders the person unconscious for some time but doesn’t cut off breathing, The Atlantic reported in 2014. The second is the chokehold, which restricts breathing “by applying pressure” to the windpipe.
Minneapolis police officers have used neck restraints at least 237 times since the beginning of 2015 and have rendered people unconscious 44 times, according to NBC News. In 16% of incidents in which police use neck holds, the subjects were left unconscious.
Most large police departments don’t allow chokeholds. The New York Police Department, Metropolitan Police Department of Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles Police Department ban chokeholds but allow neck restraints in some cases, The Atlantic reported.
The Chicago Police Department announced in February that “carotid artery restraints” would be classified as a deadly force technique.
A 2013 Justice Department survey found that of police departments that serve more than 1 million people, 43% allow a neck restraint of some kind.
Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, died in July 2014 in Staten Island after officer Daniel Pantaleo used a banned chokehold on him, The New York Times reported. Officers were sent to the scene because Garner was suspected of selling loose cigarettes, according to the outlet. Garner’s dying words “I can’t breathe” became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement.
Pantaleo was fired and found guilty of using a banned chokehold, The New York Times reported. Federal prosecutors and a Staten Island grand jury declined to bring charges against him.
Call to ban chokeholds
There has been a renewed push to ban chokeholds in recent years.
Gwen Carr, Garner’s mother, has advocated to ban chokeholds and has been calling for the ban again after the news of Floyd’s death.
“I have been pushing for this legislation right after my son was killed and they told me it would include the police officer, if he ever violates this, to be arrested and charged immediately. Because this has been in the rulebook for many years but it’s never been adhered to, so now we’re going to have legislation on it and if they violate, they will be disciplined,” Carr told Pix11.
The New York City Council will soon vote on two pieces of legislation criminalizing the police’s use of chokeholds, NY1 reported.
The “chokehold law” was introduced in 2014 by councilman Rory Lancman.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said in 2015 that he would veto the bill, but on May 31, he said he would sign it if it addressed the issue of an officer being in a “life or death situation,” according to NY1.
A federal appeals court ruled last year that police can’t use chokeholds when someone is not resisting arrest, The San Francisco Chronicle reported.
There is “robust consensus” in the courts is that a chokehold when a subject isn’t resisting arrest “violates the ban on unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said, according to the outlet.
“It has long been clear that a police officer may not seize a non-resisting, restrained person by placing him in a chokehold,” the court said.
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 10:46 AM with the headline "What are chokeholds and can police use them? It depends what kind and where you live."