Eric Garner wasn't the first Black man to be murdered in broad daylight by NYPD officers using illegal chokeholds, but his death was a flashpoint for police impunity and corruption, and the chokehold became a symbol for all lethal police violence.
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"I Can't Breathe" is @mtaibbi's outstanding book on the murder, it really conveys just how brutal the chokehold is and why it was banned by the NYPD 28 years ago, and how its routine use today symbolizes the lawlessness of law enforcement.
memex.craphound.com/2017/12/15/i-c…
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memex.craphound.com/2017/12/15/i-c…
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Chokeholds were big news in 2020, after the broad-daylight murder of George Floyd who was slowly, cruelly, deliberately executed before a crowd of horrified onlookers by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.
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Once again, it's been 28 years since the NYPD banned its officers from using chokeholds, but officers routinely break this rule, despite many initiatives and resolutions intended to eliminate this lethal "submission hold."
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In "Still Can’t Breathe," by @propublica's @ReporterTopher and @THECITYNY's @yoavgonen, we get a history of those failed initiatives, in brutal, eye-watering detail. Each failure has its own unique characteristics, but still, a unified story emerges.
propublica.org/article/chokeh…
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propublica.org/article/chokeh…
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NYPD officers use chokeholds because they don't care if they kill people. NYPD and NYC city officials let them do it because they don't care if the NYPD kills pepole.
That's it. It's an absolutely inescapable conclusion.
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That's it. It's an absolutely inescapable conclusion.
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So the Civilian Complaint Review Board can find that NYPD officers broke the law and used a chokehold, but the NYPD gets to decide what their punishment is, and they have not fired a single officer for breaking the law since Garner's murder.
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They don't fire repeat offenders like Officer Omar Habib, who uses chokeholds to punish nonviolent, nonresistign city residents for calling the police "fucking Keystone Kops," like some kind of WWE roid-rage case who sees red when someone calls him names.
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This is a cop with 46 brutality allegations in his record, five lawsuit settlements costing NYC taxpayers $200k, and multiple incidents of illegal chokehold use. The NYPD has his back, and he faced no meaningful consequences for a yearslong crime spree under cover of a badge.
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Over and over again, New York cops break the law and skip away without consequences. It will not surprise you to learn that for many years, the cops were "tried" in a court presided over by NYPD employees.
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Nor that when NYC's council cracked down on police crimes by formally creating a misdemeanor for using chokeholds, they immediately walked back the ordinance so cops wouldn't face consequences.
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Nor that the state legislature's law felonizing chokeholds only penalizing a chokehold that ends in serious injury or death - so if a cop gets off lucky and their chokehold doesn't result in death, they get to do it again.
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...and again, and again, with the state only stepping in when they snuff out a human life.
Every single time a measure is enacted to prevent chokeholds, the system neutralizes it, redefining what a chokehold is, or keeping the rule intact, but neutering its punishments.
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Every single time a measure is enacted to prevent chokeholds, the system neutralizes it, redefining what a chokehold is, or keeping the rule intact, but neutering its punishments.
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This is how you get statements from NYPD First Deputy Commissioner Benjamin Tucker like: "The prohibition on chokeholds is firm; it shall not be used,... There are those times, and maybe other times, when you can use it, but it is prohibited."
(an actual quote)
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(an actual quote)
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Every so often it happens that a cop's use of a chokehold is so egregious that they are convicted and a meaningful penalty is handed down. That happened in 2015, so then-police-commissioner Bratton simply reversed the verdict.
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You can and should read the Propublica/The CITY article, because the details are damning and brutal - but in the most important sense (whether they provoked a change in the system), they also don't matter.
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The thing that matters about them is that they didn't matter. Cops get to say things like "You need two arms to do a chokehold" and walk away from consequences. They get to claim that "I can't breathe" is a "rallying cry" and not a human being begging for their life.
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The conclusion is inescapable. Cops kill people with chokeholds because they don't care if chokeholds kill people. City governments let them do it because they don't care if chokeholds kill.
Not just any people - chokeholds are disproportionately used against Black men.
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Not just any people - chokeholds are disproportionately used against Black men.
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For all that this inspires hopelessness, it's important work, and it brings us new parts of the story that were previously shrouded in secrecy - thanks to the NYPD disciplinary records that Propublica published this summer:
pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/…
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pluralistic.net/2020/07/27/ip/…
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We already had all the facts we needed to determine that this system needed to be torn down to its rotten foundations and rebuilt, but now we have more, and political will is building.
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The NYPD disciplinary files are an ocean of blood, lawlessly spilled under color of law. The only injustice that would be greater than that violence is for us to look away.
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ETA, if you'd prefer to read this or link to it as a blog post without any surveillance or ads or tracking, here's a permalink for you: pluralistic.net/2021/01/21/i-c…
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