San Diego police ban controversial neck restraint which killed George Floyd
Floyd, 46, was arrested on May 25 after an employee at a grocery store called police to accuse him of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill.
More than a week after the death of George Floyd, the San Diego police said that it will end the controversial practice of carotid restraint.
San Diego mayor Kevin Faulconer and police chief David Nisleit said at a press conference on Monday that the practice will be “immediately stopped”.
Nisleit also said that this is the right thing to do for the community.
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Under the carotid restraint, an immobilisation technique, a police officer applies pressure to sides of a detainee’s neck to render him unconscious. “But no police academy that we know of teaches a police officer to use their knee, to put it on their neck,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which researches and advises on police practices, to,d news agency Associated Press.
“That’s just not taught because that can impact their breathing and their carotid artery (a crucial vessel that supplies blood to the brain),” he added.
Officers are also taught to get a suspect up from the ground as soon as possible, either sitting or standing, since lying on one’s stomach can cause breathing problems, especially for larger people.
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Floyd, 46, was arrested on Monday (May 25) in Minneapolis after an employee at a grocery store called police to accuse him of trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. The cellphone video shows Floyd, who is black, face-down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, as officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, uses the knee restraint on his neck.
Floyd’s head is turned to the side and he does not appear to be resisting. As the minutes tick by and Chauvin continues to hold him down, Floyd’s complaints about not being able to breathe stop as he falls silent and motionless. Toward the end of the video, paramedics arrive, lift a limp Floyd onto a stretcher and place him in an ambulance.
“He wasn’t actively resisting, and he was saying he couldn’t breathe,” said Charles P. Stephenson, a former police officer and FBI agent with expertise in use-of-force tactics. “You have to understand that possibility is there (that Floyd couldn’t breathe), and you release any kind of restriction you might have on an airway immediately.”
Chauvin and the three other responding officers have been fired, and the FBI is investigating whether they willfully deprived Floyd of his civil rights.
Other cities like New York and Chicago have already banned the practice of restraining a person throug this controversial hold. However, Minneapolis where Floyd was killed, allows it.
