Officer in chokehold video is focus of criminal probe

A New York City police officer suspended from duty after he was recorded Sunday putting a man in what the police commissioner said was a banned chokehold could face crim- inal charges for the second time in his career.

Queens prosecutors said Monday they’ve opened an investigation into Officer David Afanador’s actions on the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach, adding that “there must be zero tolerance for police misconduct.”

Afanador was acquitted in a previous case stem- ming from allegations he pistol-whipped a teenage suspect in Brooklyn and broke two of his teeth.

The police department moved quickly to suspend Afanador without pay after Sunday’s confrontation. Police Commissioner Der- mot Shea announced his suspension just hours after video was posted on social media and called the swift action a sign of “unprece- dented times.”

“I think we have an obligation to act swiftly but we also have to get it right and to inform the public about what’s going on,” Shea told TV station NY1 on Monday.

It’s at least the second time Afanador has been suspended from the force. The officer was sidelined after his 2014 arrest, only to return to duty after a judge acquitted him and his partner of all charges in 2016.

Afanador was involved in eight incidents that were the subject of complaints to the city’s police watchdog agency since joining the police department in 2005, according to records obtained Monday under a new state law making disciplinary files public.

In Sunday’s incident, in the wake of protests over George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, a video shot by one of the men involved in the altercation showed officers tackling a Black man and Afanador putting his arm around the man’s neck as he lay face down on the boardwalk. Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz has declined to pursue any charges against the man.