New NYPD Discipline Rules Won't Apply To Old Chokehold Cases

New York City NY

22 January, 2021

1:37 PM

Description

NEW YORK CITY — Much-touted new NYPD discipline rules make clear that officers found to use chokeholds will be fired — but the cops who wrongfully used the banned maneuver in the years after Eric Garner's death won't be, Mayor Bill de Blasio said. "The discipline matrix, from this point on, literally today on, anyone who utilizes a chokehold as member of the NYPD — and it's proven because there is due process — it's very clear in the matrix the result is termination," de Blasio said Friday on WNYC's "Brian Lehrer Show." De Blasio has spent days praising the NYPD's new "discipline matrix" — a document that sets firm penalties, up to termination, for police misconduct — as a game changer for the department and the public it serves. The rules indeed make clear that cops will be fired if they're found to, among other offenses, use excessive deadly force or banned chokeholds. But Lehrer asked about a recent story by THE CITY that documented 40 cases in which a civilian review board substantiated that NYPD officers used the chokehold but the cops remained on the force. All those cases were after the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who gasped "I can't breathe" while in a chokehold. "Will this discipline matrix apply retroactively?" Lehrer asked de Blasio. "And if not, what do you plan to do about those officers?" "The cases before, each one's through their own process," de Blasio said. "Some substantiated, some not, some resulted in discipline, some are still pending. By all normal American law, you can't do double jeopardy, you can't retry someone for the same offense, but you can, going forward, apply these standards. And that's what we're going to do consistently." Another recent Patch story found that 90 percent of all chokehold complaints filed against cops were made by people of color.