Police chokehold ban sponsor rebukes move to weaken law
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Mayor Bill de Blasio signs a bill criminalizing police chokeholds into law in the Bronx on July 15. Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
By David Brand
The Queens councilmember who sponsored legislation criminalizing the use of banned police chokeholds has rebuked an effort by his colleagues to weaken the law.
Justice System Committee Chair Rory Lancman introduced the measure that makes it a misdemeanor for NYPD officers to use a chokehold or otherwise restrict a person’s ability to breath during an arrest. Such chokeholds are already banned under NYPD policy, but have been used regularly with few consequences.
The New York Post. reported Tuesday that the council plans to vote on a new bill removing the piece of the law that prohibits cops from applying pressure to a person’s diaphragm, including by standing, sitting or kneeling on their chest or back. Lancman sharply criticized the reported plan to soften the month-old law.
“There hasn’t been a single example of an officer being unfairly prosecuted or unable to arrest,” Lancman said.
Changing the law “to appease a police union work slowdown [would] eviscerate not just the law itself, but the rule of law and the legitimacy of the City Council as an institution capable of overseeing the NYPD,” he said.
Councilmember Donovan Richards, chair of the Public Safety Committee, told NY1 he would be open to adjusting the law earlier this month if it meant an end to a perceived work slowdown among police officers who have affected fewer arrests even as violent crime has spiked in recent months.
On Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Richards was taking the lead on amending the law while preserving “the crucial reform in the original legislation.”
“Chokeholds will be illegal no matter what. As I understand, the focus here is just on some clarification on the issue of diaphragms,” de Blasio said during his daily briefing.
Opponents of the current law, including NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan, say the measure is “dangerous” and makes cops think twice about touching someone’s back during an arrest altercation because they fear they could be charged with a crime.
“Any cop who’s ever fought with someone on the street, trying to get him into cuffs, there’s a great possibility that your knee is going to end up on that individual’s back, and now this new law is criminalizing it,” Monahan told PIX 11.
“When you have to worry that someone who may have taken a shot at you that you are now arresting, if your knee hits their back, you become the criminal.”
The chokehold bill passed the City Council 47-3 in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd. It was signed into law by Mayor Bill de Blasio in July, despite denunciations from unions representing New York City police officers.
Lancman first introduced the measure in 2014, following the police chokehold killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island.
