NYPD Cop Arrested And Charged With Strangulation After Using Banned ‘Chokehold’

As shootings and other violent crimes skyrocket in NYC, Mayor de Blasio and his administration are focusing on pandering to the (mostly white) BLM marchers who took to the streets in the middle of an epidemic, while rioters and looters ransacked storefronts from SoHo to midtown to the Bronx.

And in the latest and perhaps most egregious example of a cop being punished for doing his job, an NYC police officer was arrested on Thursday morning and charged with strangulation and attempted strangulation over a controversial video that shows him apparently using a chokehold on a suspect after police were called to the scene to confront a group of hooligans who were harassing pedestrians and reportedly throwing stuff at them.

David Afanador, 39, the officer caught on video using the chokehold, had already been suspended from the force, before being arrested on Thursday.

In the video, as Reuters pointed out, the man who was arrested and several associates can be heard cursing and insulting the cop.

Here’s more from Reuters:

The NYPD has banned its officers from using chokeholds since 1993, warning they can be deadly. Earlier this month, as part of a package of police reform bills spurred by the nationwide protests against police violence, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation making it a crime for officers to use chokeholds and similar neck restraints.

The forceful arrest on the Rockaway Beach boardwalk in Queens on Sunday was captured on police body-cam videos, which were released by the NYPD, and cellphone videos recorded by bystanders.

The videos show officers restraining the man on his stomach and one officer, Afanador, wrapping his arm around the man’s neck.

The man was arrested for being “disorderly” and was hospitalized after briefly falling unconscious in the officer’s grip, according to his lawyers at Queens Defenders.

The man, along with two others, could be seen cursing and insulting Afanador and his colleagues for several minutes prior to the arrest.
Scrutiny of the police has intensified across the country in the wake of the death on May 25 of George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest in Minneapolis.

Video showed a white officer with his knee on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, giving rise ever since to some of the largest, most sustained nationwide protests seen in the United States in decades.

Meanwhile, sympathy for the police continues to wane amid a steady stream of stories like this one, where three Maryland cops were fired after being caught on tape discussing a “race war” and saying things like “we’re going to go out and start slaughtering them”, according to the Washington Post.