It turns out that Daniel Pantaleo, the New York City police officer who killed Eric Garner after putting him in a chokehold, is not the only officer in the city who committed the banned move. Vocativ.com released a chart of all the citizen complaints against NYPD officers, showing, among many other things, that 89 people have reported police officers for putting them in chokeholds in 2014 alone.
The statistics from the chart come from two categories of complaints that citizens can make against the NYPD: "uses of force," which accounts for unwarranted physical acts of violence against citizens, including chokeholds. Other reports are categorized as "abuse of authority" complaints, which cover stopping citizens or searching their vehicles without a warrant or probable reason.
Among the complaints for "uses of force," chokeholds come in second behind 149 cases of pointed guns. What is even more chilling than that, however, is that the chart indicates which of these reports were substantiated (meaning the officer is found of wrongdoing), and in the case of chokeholds, only one case of an officer doing it was considered misconduct. In fact, if you look at the pink line on the chart representing substantiated claims, you'll see that for the most part, police officers are not charged for these banned uses of force at all.
Mind you, these statistics only account for report cases of police abuse; Odds are, there are many more unreported instances. As always, it's important to be informed about what your rights are, and what kind of conduct by law enforcement is legal—particularly now that we're being made increasingly aware of how often those boundaries are violated.
Here is the chart from Vocativ:
Courtesy of: Vocativ.com
