Go to qualitypolicing.com

Tag: use of force

  • If you can say, “I can’t breath”…

    If you can say, “I can’t breath”…

    The first thing that jumps to mind in the death of Eric Garneris that somebody who is repeatedly saying “I can’t breath” is, in fact, breathing. It’s a basic rules of choking, first aid, and well, the way we speak. [Update: Seems I’m probably very wrong about this.]

    Also, I’m no expert in chokeholds (because most departments forbid them), but what I do know is that a chokehold can either block the windpipe (which won’t kill you, since suffocation takes a while after you pass out) or block the carotid(?) arteries in the neck (which technically isn’t a chokehold but a strangle-hold). The former is done with the arm flat on the windpipe. The latter is more a vice grip, and you’ll go out pretty quickly. It’s pretty lethal. If you’re on the giving end, you have to let go as soon as the person drops if you don’t want the person on the receiving end to die.

    I don’t see either of those being a factor here… though it doesn’t look good for the officer in green, Agent 99, who did grab Mr. Garner’s neck, since chokeholds are forbidden. That officer also may have rushed the decision to put Mr. Garner in custody. Generally I’m for a hand-on approach to physically controlling a guy. And it’s not easy to control a man as large as Mr. Garner. I’d be more critical if Mr. Garner died after being Tased.

    But this is not a chokehold (though it’s possible one was used later).

    And yet the Daily News caption in an article about chokeholds says “Eric Garner was put in a chokehold as Staten Island police tried to subdue him Thursday.” The officer (Agent 99) is using a half nelson and pulling on the guy’s neck for leverage to bring him down and to the right, which he does. He’s not near the windpipe, and this does not seem to be an attempt to choke the guy. So it’s not a chokehold. Does that distinction matter if the guy is dead? Well, yes. Because chokeholds are forbidden, and the guy is dead.

    But there’s an important difference between saying “the cops killed him with a forbidden chokehold for resisting” (as I’ve heard people say) and “he died while resisting.” Once you decide the guy is under arrest, what would you do? Mayor DiBlasio said he watched the video like family. Well, I watched it like a cop. And it’s not easy to get cuffs and a large resisting man. Just because he died, which is a tragedy, doesn’t mean he was killed, which is homicide. Certainly it will matter what the autopsy shows.

    What you have is a very large and presumably out-of-shape asthmatic man resisting arrest, perhaps because he didn’t deserve to be arrested. (I don’t know, I wasn’t there.) There do seem to be multiple witnesses (actually at the scene, I might add, which isn’t a given when it comes to “witnesses”) saying the same thing: Mr. Garner was a peacemaker trying to break up a fight. [But the officers seem to be arresting Mr. Garner for something else entirely: selling a cigarette.]

    Mr. Garner, apparently, has been arrested 30-some times. And that very well may be why police focused on him.

    But best I can tell (and again, I may be wrong), Mr. Garner seems to be little more than a repeat offender for the criminal offense of… selling loosie cigarettes! Now of all the idiot war-on-drugs nonsense… illegal cigarette selling should be low on the list of law-enforcement priorities. The guy died for selling loosies? And if he was selling them for 75 cents each (I don’t know the going price for loosies), then they’re cheaper than buying them legally by the pack. If he’s selling them for a dollar, then he’s making a good profit!

    Why are about half of all the cigarettes sold in New York illegal? Because the tax is too high, and that has created a very large black market. The thing about legal regulated drug selling is it needs to make sense.

    High taxes on cigarettes — $5.85 a pack ($4.35 New York State plus another $1.50 for New York City — were politically popular under Bloomberg, but probably do more harm than good in New York. That, just as much as any chokehold, contributed to the death of Eric Garner.

    Selling loosies shouldn’t be a crime.

    [The post has been updated. And see this as well, dispelling the idea that if you can talk, you can’t be not able to breathe.]

  • NYPD Aims Better in 2012

    It’s being reportedthat fatal NYPD police-involved shootings were way up in 2012. They are, but it’s a non-story. Indeed, fatal police-involved shootings increased from 9 to 16, but better aim and luck were probably the reasons why. Police-involved shootings were only up by 2, to 30. (And this even though the average distance from which officers shot was further away in 2012.)

    The real story (though you should always be leery basing a story on what might be a statistical one-year fluke) is that the number of NYPD officers shot went up from 4 in 2011 to 13 in 2012. Luckily none of those 13 was killed. 13 officers shot is the most since 1998. In 1997 27 officer were shot, 4 fatally.

    30 police-involved shootings is an incredible low number for a city as big as New York. It is also part of a long-tern downward trend (that correlates, not surprisingly, with the crime rate). In 1990 there 111 police-involved shootings. Going back even further, in 1972 there were 211 people shot by cops!

    To put this in comparison, Baltimore, with a fraction of New York’s population and about 3,000 officers, had 22 police-involved shootings in 2009 (the last year I have numbers for).

    Here’s the NYPD report.

    Update: Houston police, with 5,300 officers has shot an average of 24 people a year (10 of them fatally) for the past five years. Many were unarmed.

  • Can you say “Contagion Shooting”?

    They then opened fire. The authorities would not estimate how many rounds were discharged. Mr. Gainer, the sergeant-at-arms, said he believed that five to seven officers had fired.

    Possible Clues in Fatal Chase, but No Motive — Miriam Carey Was in Car When Police Fired, Official Says

  • Good Cop

    The Reese Witherspoon arrest on video.

    You know what I like?

    Reese: “I have to obey your order?!”

    Officer: “Yes, you do.

    Well done, officer. Well handled. Grace under pressure.

    Witherspoon: “Do you know my name… You’re about to find out who am I.”

    Officer: “That’s fine. I’m not really worried about you, Ma’am.”

    …

    Witherspoon: “I’m an American citizen, I’m allowed to do whatever I want to do.”

    Funny she should think that.

    Honestly, Witherspoon didn’t embarrass herself too much. But she was wrong. And she got arrested. And Reese was also wrong about it being national news. It is international news.

    As a side note, I’m always amazed when I see a solo officer arresting somebody. I patrolled without a partner, but I was taught never to arrest without backup. The one time I didn’t follow that advice, I ended on the pavement of Eager Street wrestling with a handcuffed suspect.

    That’s right. He was handcuffed. I wasn’t. What could I do? I couldn’t mace him. I couldn’t hit him. He was in handcuffs, for crying out loud! He had not one but both hands tied behind his back! And I still couldn’t get that SOB under control.

    Never was I so happy to hear sirens coming.

    And never again did arrest anybody without backup.

  • Why did Robert Ethan Saylor die?

    My colleague at John Jay College, James Mulvaney, had a good op-ed in the Washington Post last month about a tragic and unnecessary death in Central Maryland. As both a former police officer and a former movie theater usher, I can’t help but think Prof. Mulvaney get’s it right. You can read it here:

    Where is the public outrage over the death of Robert Ethan Saylor, killed in January while being taken into police custody in Frederick for the crimes of petty larceny and, perhaps, disorderly conduct?

    Saylor, 26, had Down syndrome, a genetic defect that can cause cognitive deficiencies, poor judgment, impulsive behavior and other issues. Unlike many other disorders, it is associated with recognizable physical traits, especially unique facial features. Photographs show Saylor to have had the classic “Down” look.

  • Another Day at the Office (III) — Pain Compliance

    This is news that shouldn’t be: officers arrest a resisting suspect and for their efforts get splashed on the news for alleged brutality. At least the B.P.D. didn’t flinch.

    I say eighty percent of videos that purport to show brutality involve people under arrest who won’t put their hands behinds behind their back. If you’re under arrest and so ordered, you need to put your hands behind your back.

    Here’s the thing — and I want you to try this at home or work with someone you love — lie on your belly with your arms under you. Now have that someone try and force yours arms apart. Resist. Those arms won’t budge. Now make it a threesome and have two people pulling. Those arms still won’t budge.

    It’s incredibly hard to get a resisting person’s arms out from under them. It’s just the way the human body is built. So when that happens, police police use what is called (strangely un-euphemistically), “pain compliance.” It’s a fancy term for old-school putting on the hurt.

    Pain compliance is done with pressure points or mace. In a pinch, you could strike somebody, but this is not how it’s supposed to be done because it looks bad and you might break something.

    Pain compliance is not self-defense. And it’s not normal use of force in which the force is directed toward the goal. Pain compliance is supposed to hurt. And it keeps hurting we keep hurting until you decide it’s in your best interests to follow lawful orders. And as soon as you comply, we’ll stop putting on the hurt. Because you see those hands… how are we going to get those hands behind your back? We’ve already tried asking and forcing.

    [thanks to Gotti]