On Wed, 03 Dec 2014 19:49:55 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 12/3/2014 7:35 PM, Wayne.B wrote:
On Wed, 03 Dec 2014 18:52:38 -0500, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

A choke hold in NY is not permitted under any circumstances per NYPD
policy. It is considered to be excessive force.

Questions:

Is the choke therefore against the law?

===

No. The rule is a departmental policy, and if you break it, you are
subject to departmental discipline/corrective action. If you could
establish in a departmental hearing that you had no other choice or it
was accidental, you might be exonerated. That doesn't seem very
likely in this case since they could have maced Garner or tasered him.
The cops clearly over reacted in my opinion. Given Garner's asthma
and other medical issues, the mace or taser might have killed him but
we'll never know.



Thanks. That makes sense.

It seems to me that police officers in NYC might have better things to
do than go after a guy for selling a few packs of non-taxed cigarettes.

But there was also a reference to Garner being involved in breaking up a
fight. Maybe that's why the police were called.


===

I believe Garner had a lot of priors for relatively low level street
crimes and was well known to the local cops.

One of the reasons that Rudy Giuliani was so successful at reducing
NYC's crime rate was because of the active pursuit of low level crimes
that were formerly ignored. It turns out that the big crimes are
committed by pretty much the same people as the small crimes, so if
you pursue the petty offenders you also reduce the more serious stuff.
That lesson took hold and has influenced policy ever since.