No Choke About It

Philip Eure has just released his maiden report as the police inspector general. It analyzes 10 chokehold claims against New York City police officers that had been substantiated by the Civilian Complaint Review Board.

To put this in perspective, these are 10 cases between 2009 and 2014. Over this same period, our police force made more than 2 million arrests.

In one case, the review board made no recommendation because the accused police officer died in unrelated circumstances. In another, the board’s investigator declined to substantiate the claim but was then overruled by the board. A footnote by Eure states that his report declines to “evaluate” the quality of the CCRB’s own investigations.

The gist of the complaint against the cops boils down to this: In six of these 10 cases, thenCommissioner Ray Kelly opted for a discipline lighter than the punishment recommended by the review board.

Now, we’re all for reviewing police policies, not least because the city apparently still doesn’t have a clear definition of exactly what constitutes a chokehold. We also recognize there are individual cops who use excessive force — and when they are identified, they should be punished or removed.

But to make broad assertions about the police and chokeholds from a sample size this small is ludicrous. Ironically, Eure himself admits, “No conclusions can or should be drawn about the prevalence of chokeholds in NYPD encounters from such a discrete and limited sample size.” (Emphasis added.) So why the report? Because this office was created by politicians with one goal in mind: to secondguess the cops.

Mission accomplished.