Now, hold on
Pol seeks details in cop choke
A QUEENS CITY councilman fired off a letter to the NYPD, demanding cops turn over records in the case of an officer found guilty during a department trial of using a banned chokehold on a suspect.
Police Commissioner James O’Neill overturned the ruling by the administrative trial judge last month — the first time he’d exercised that power since becoming the city’s top cop in September.
City Councilman Rory Lancman threatened to subpoena O’Neill if the records are not turned over, according to the letter obtained by the Daily News on Tuesday.
“If you fail to produce these records by Sept. 7th, I will ask that the Council issue a subpoena . . . compelling their disclosure,” Lancman wrote.
The NYPD and the Civilian Complaint Review Board have refused to provide the officer’s name, details of the case or why O’Neill rejected the administrative law judge’s decision. They cited Section 50-a of the state Civil Rights Law, which keeps police personnel records private.
The incident that led to the department charges happened on Oct. 9, 2013. Cops arrested a man at a transitional living facility in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, for making threats against a relative.
In the elevator, the handcuffed man tried to kick a detective. He turned to spit at another detective, the sources said. That detective placed his hand on the back of the man’s neck and covered the suspect’s face with a pair of pants.
The detectives pushed the man against the elevator buttons. The man then tried to elbow the detective who covered his face, the sources said. That detective wrapped his forearm around his neck for several seconds, and then they led the cuffed man out of the elevator, sources said.
The CCRB recommended the guilty verdict, based in part on an analysis of surveillance video of the confrontation captured in a reflection inside the elevator.
It was still not clear late Tuesday why O’Neill overturned the judge’s ruling.
“(The suspect) was being combative and it all happened in a few seconds,” a police source said. “This is totally different from the Eric Garner case.”
Garner died after he was placed in a chokehold by Officer Daniel Pantaleo on Staten Island in 2014. The NYPD banned the practice in 1993.
The city had to pay Garner’s family $5.9 million in a legal settlement.
“The information is necessary as chokeholds have been a persistent problem,” Lancman told The News. “Right now, this is a close cousin to the coverup being worse than the crime.”
Meanwhile, a former chairman of the Civilian Complaint Review Board said the records should be public.
“I think this is a case of a terrific police department shooting itself in the foot,” said lawyer Richard Emery, chairman of the CCRB from 2014 to 2016.
In another development around the issue of police disciplinary records, the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, will hear a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union against the city to force the disclosure of the outcome of NYPD disciplinary hearings.