NEW YORK—The city’s police union bristled in an open display of disapproval to two City Council bills introduced on Thursday that will make significant changes to the police department’s operations if passed.
One bill would prohibit police officers from using chokeholds and charge officers who violate the law with a misdemeanor. The other would require police officers to ask for consent to search an individual.
The police union president Patrick Lynch said in a statement: “These proposals will endanger both the police and the public alike. The negative anti-police message that this out of control City Council consistently sends is a disincentive to pro-active policing that will leave cops standing on the corner like potted palms.”
At a rare public appearance to address media questions on Thursday, Lynch accused the City Council of trying to gain public attention by stoking anti-police sentiment. “This all about standing on the steps of City Hall and having a press conference,” he said. “This is the City Council trying to pass legislation that absolutely solves nothing and there’s no problem to solve.”
The City Council bills arrive amid a growing wave of public dissatisfaction with the NYPD’s policing methods, particularly after police officers were caught on video camera this July restraining Staten Island man Eric Garner with a chokehold maneuver, leading to his death.
In the video, Garner, who was being arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes, is heard shouting “I can’t breathe” several times as officers wrestled him to the ground.
The Chokehold Debate
The use of a chokehold—where a police officer wraps his arm around the suspect’s neck—was banned from the police department in 1993. But the NYPD did not follow its own department rule and failed to discipline officers who used the chokehold, according to a recently published study by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the city’s watchdog agency in charge of investigating public complaints of police misconduct.
After Police Commissioner William Bratton took over the department this year with a promise to crack down on low-level, quality-of-life criminal offenses, New York residents, civil rights advocates, and community groups also connected the Eric Garner incident to a broader pattern of discriminatory policing practices that disproportionately target people of color. Garner was African-American.
In August, a Staten Island march drew thousands to protest Garner’s death.
Outlawing Chokeholds
The City Council bill, introduced by Council member Rory Lancman, would make chokeholds a crime punishable by up to one year imprisonment, or a fine up to $2,500. “Although chokeholds have been banned as a matter of NYPD internal policy for over 20 years, their use still remains prevalent,” said Lancman in a statement.
“With this bill, we make chokeholds not merely a violation of NYPD policy, but a crime, reflecting the inherent danger which chokeholds present to our city’s public safety,” he said.
Commissioner Bratton announced at a City Council hearing in September that all police officers will now undergo training on how to restrain people who resist arrest without physically harming them.
When Lancman asked Bratton at the hearing whether he'd support legislation that prohibits chokeholds, Bratton responded in the negative, saying the department policy was sufficient to prevent their use.
