NY State Supreme Court Reinstates Ban on Police Choke Holds During Arrests
May 21, 2022 | New York
A New York state law that bans police officers from using any move that makes it hard for a suspect to breath during an arrest, such as a choke hold, was reinstated Thursday.
The state’s Supreme Court Appellate Division overturned a June 2021 ruling that allowed the use of moves that compress the suspect’s diaphragm during arrests, New York Post reported.
Police unions and advocates brought the legal challenge to the Supreme Court last year, when Justice Laurence Love ruled the ban was “unconstitutionally vague.”
However, in reinstating the ban on Thursday, the Supreme Court Appellate Division said the previous ruling “should not have found the diaphragm compression ban to be unconstitutionally vague.”
“The diaphragm compression ban is sufficiently definite to give notice of the prohibited conduct and does not lack objective standards or create the potential for arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement,” the court’s First Judicial Department wrote…. (Excerpt from the Epoch Time)
