Miami-Dade, Hialeah police among agencies that still permit choke holds. Critics want a ban.
In the two weeks since the killing of George Floyd, police in Minneapolis and San Diego have been banned from using any kinds of choke holds, including the unsanctioned knee-to-the neck tactic used by one of his arresting officers, who now faces a second-degree murder charge.
State legislators in California have called for a statewide ban of all neck restraints. So did far-off France, which has had large street protests much like the ones happening daily in most major U.S. cities, and quickly moved to bar choke holds.
There has been no widespread call to take similar action in Florida, where police departments in Hialeah and Miami-Dade County — the single largest law enforcement agency in the Southeast U.S. — are among the forces that continue to allow officers to routinely use what is supposed to be a non-lethal neck restraint to subdue a suspect.
But pressure is growing to end the practice.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Barbara Jordan, who has been leading the charge for county police reform and the creation of a civilian police oversight panel, is among the political leaders demanding a change.
“The neck restraint can cut off breathing and it can also paralyze,” Jordan said. “To me, it’s inhumane to even apply it.”
On Tuesday, over 100 people lined up at a county commission committee meeting to speak on Jordan’s bill to order a review of police policies and practices and restraint tactics within the next 30 days. Miami-Dade Commissioner Daniella Levine Cava, who is running for mayor in August, also has released a five-point police reform plan that includes the elimination of choke and strangle holds.
Last week, Democratic Congresswoman Val Demings, a former Orlando police chief and a possible vice presidential pick, called for a federal ban on neck restraints — a request echoed in a police reform bill that was recently unveiled in the U.S. House.
While police call it a less-than-lethal tactic, critics — including many of the protesters who have filled streets in South Florida and across the country — point to the tortuous video of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, restricting his breathing. Two medical examiners, one with the city and an independent one hired by Floyd’s family, found the tactic either killed him outright or contributed to his death.
Yet despite the advent of safer less-than-lethal weapons in recent years, choke holds remain part of the training for many police departments.
No department officially permits or trains an officer to kneel on a suspect’s neck, as Chauvin did after a shopkeeper called in a report that Floyd passed him a counterfeit $20 bill. Use-of-force experts say a knee between shoulder blades to restrain a struggling suspect is an acceptable technique but not a knee applied to the back of the neck of a handcuffed and prone suspect.
The most controversial restraint method still permitted in Hialeah and Miami-Dade is known as a lateral vascular or carotid neck restraint. It involves getting behind a suspect, placing an arm around to that person’s chest, getting the crook of the elbow under the chin area and applying pressure for 10 to 12 seconds.
It’s a constraint technique similar to one applied to another black man, Eric Garner, by a New York City officer in 2014 looking into a call that Garner was selling cigarettes on the street. Garner was killed after repeatedly telling officers, “I can’t breath,” words that became a slogan for the Black Lives Matter movement. A medical examiner’s reporter found the choke hold, which is banned by NYPD, contributed to his death.
Miami-Dade police, which refused comment Tuesday on the the neck restraint issue, released a three-page statement on Twitter earlier this week listing its use-of-force policies. In it, the department said it does not “teach or utilize strangleholds or chokeholds.” But in the very next sentence it said officers are instructed in the usage of applied carotid triangle restraint for non-lethal situations and that officers are tested twice a year in their proficiency.
Hialeah police did not respond Tuesday to questions asking if the city was working on police reform or if it believed its less-than-lethal restraint policy was effective and why. Instead, in an email, the department said the question was forwarded to the city clerk as a public records request. Reached Tuesday, Hialeah City Clerk Marbelys Fatjo said only the police department or the mayor could answer the question.
Statewide, other large law enforcement agencies like the Orange and Broward County sheriff’s offices allow neck restraints — but only in potentially lethal situations. The city of MIami and other South Florida police agencies also permit the tactic in a lethal situation to save the life of an officer or someone else. That’s a key difference, say use-of-force experts.
Some agencies have recognized the potential problem. Miami-Dade Public Schools Police Chief Edwin Lopez said two policy changes he’s made since taking over two years ago were ridding officers of Tasers and putting an end to any type of neck restraint. He said schools police have safer and easier methods of subduing any student who might be considered a threat.
“We just don’t have the amount of use-of-force in schools to necessitate the use of those type of tools,” said Lopez. “We have de-escalation training and other skill sets to utilize to get compliance.”
Despite police tactical training, critics say the choke-hold restraint far too often can be deadly. California largely eliminated the practice in the early 1980s after several black men were killed and Police Chief Daryl Gates uttered one of the most infamous statements from a chief in recent memory: “Veins or arteries of blacks do not open up as fast as they do in normal people.”
Gates was forced to resign a decade later in the wake of the Rodney King riots, an unarmed black man whose beating at the hands of police in 1991 after a chase was captured on video. King died 11 years later.
Miami police did away with its neck restraint policy decades ago after one of the most infamous police-involved killings in department history. In 1992, after police observed Antonio Edwards, 24, parked the wrong way on a Liberty City street, two officers got him out of his vehicle, handcuffed him and held him down as officer Carl Seals applied a choke hold.
Edwards spent years comatose before his death and city commissioners agreed to award his family $7.5 million, which at the time was the largest police settlement in U.S. history. Seals was later fired.
MIami Police Chief Jorge Colina said there are just too many variables involved that could make applying a choke hold go south. For instance, he said, an officer likely isn’t aware of a suspect’s underlying medical conditions. The chief has said that if one of his officer’s applies the measure, he or she better be prepared to use it as a deadly force and to save a life.
“An officer is not allowed to use it [non-lethal neck restraint] under any circumstance,” said the chief. “The only time you use it is if you need it as a lethal force.”
This story was originally published June 9, 2020 at 6:01 PM.
