Newsom seeks ban on carotid ‘stranglehold’ used by police. Sacramento can lead the way

A police officer wraps his arm around the neck of an 18-year-old man who struggles to breathe. A bystander screams “stop choking him” at the officer while another officer, wielding a baton, orders the outraged woman to stay back.

The video, which shows a Sacramento police officer using a stranglehold on a local teen early Monday morning, echoes in some ways the video of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. But this scene unfolded on a downtown Sacramento street during protests against police brutality.

The footage has renewed the debate over the Sacramento Police Department’s use of strangleholds and neck restraints. This includes the stranglehold technique known as the carotid restraint, blood choke or sleeper hold. It cuts off blood flow to the brain.

“When using the carotid restraint, officers use an arm to apply pressure to both sides of a person’s neck,” wrote The Sacramento Bee’s Theresa Clift. “When used correctly, it can cause a person to quickly become unconscious.”

The dangerous and potentially deadly techniques have already been banned by police departments in other major cities. In January 2019, the office of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra recommended that the police department also “further prohibit” such deadly tactics. His recommendations were part of a review of the department’s use-of-force tactics after two officers shot Stephon Clark to death in 2018.

“(Sacramento Police Department) should continue to prohibit chokeholds, and further prohibit carotid restraints, and other maneuvers which are designed to, or may foreseeably result in, cutting off blood or oxygen to a subject’s head,” the attorney general’s report said.

It further added: “Specifically, SPD should restrict all physical maneuvers, including carotid restraints, that are designed to or may foreseeably cut off blood or oxygen to an individual’s head. Similarly situated departments, including those that serve San Francisco, Miami, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C., prohibit choke or neck holds such as carotid restraints.”

Instead of banning strangulation, Sacramento Police Chief Daniel Hahn is still allowing it in certain situations.

The Minneapolis Police Department had a similar approach, with such techniques “basically reserved for when an officer feels caught in a life-or-death situation,” according to the New York Times. Now, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Minneapolis has banned them.

After Sunday’s incident, Mayor Darrell Steinberg wants a “public discussion” about whether to ban the techniques.

“The chief said to me today that the reason he believes it should still be allowed as the most limited form of force is that if you take that away, the officer who then is in a situation where he or she is facing a serious threat of bodily injury or death, only then has an option to use a physical weapon,” Steinberg told Bee columnist Marcos Breton on Wednesday. “And so I want to have further discussion with him about that and with my colleagues and have it publicly before I just say we should change it. I’m very concerned about it in light of what we know.”

Peter Bibring, a use-of-force expert who works for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said police departments around the nation are banning these methods for a good reason.

“They are very easy to misapply,” Bibring said. “You can cut off air or do serious damage to the neck, resulting in injury or death. There’s an increasing view that all chokeholds and carotid should be prohibited ... that’s what the California Department of Justice recommended to the Sacramento Police Department.”

Bibring rejected the assertion that officers might have to resort to deadlier forms of force if they can’t use chokes, calling it a “false argument.”

“Officers should be relying on de-escalation tactics, and they should get better training in de-escalation and avoid the need for that kind of force,” he said. “What we’ve seen is that when officers are authorized to use lower levels of force, they do it in situations when they would never use a gun. That’s certainly been true of tasers; that’s true of chokeholds as well.”

Bibring pointed to the case of Eric Garner, a New York man who died after being held in a chokehold by police officers, as an example. Police were arresting him on suspicion of selling cigarettes. In Minneapolis, an officer knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for over eight minutes because he was suspected of passing a fake $20 bill. Both men were African American and both were unarmed.

The Sacramento Police Department declined to answer questions about the department’s neck restraint policy. Instead, a police spokesman emailed a link to a report which said the department has “completed” implementation of the attorney general’s recommendation.

Mayor Steinberg and the ACLU’s Bibring appear to disagree with this assessment.

Steinberg is right to call for public discussion — but it should be short and focused. Sacramento must immediately and unconditionally ban these techniques. San Diego and Pittsburgh announced bans this week. Former Vice President Joe Biden is calling for a nationwide ban. On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom called for a statewide ban.

There’s no reason why Sacramento should lag behind in the movement to prohibit police from using deadly strangulation techniques against citizens, given our community’s painful experience with the police killings of unarmed African American men.

Chief Hahn and his boss, City Manager Howard Chan, must immediately lead the change. People power and the City Council can move them along.

Editor’s note: This editorial has been updated to reflect Gov. Newsom’s call for California to ban strangleholds and carotid restraints.

This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 10:24 AM.