Choke hold complaints against N.Y.C. police on the rise: report

By Ellen Wulfhorst NEW YORK (Reuters) - Complaints against the New York Police Department about the use of illegal choke holds are increasing, and the incidents are not always properly investigated or subject to discipline, an agency that handles police complaints said on Tuesday. The use of choke holds, banned under police guidelines because they can be deadly, has come under intense scrutiny with the July death of Eric Garner as he was being arrested for selling untaxed cigarettes. A cellphone video showed New York police officers using what appears to be a choke hold as they wrestled Garner to the sidewalk. A retraining of 36,000 police officers and top-level review of the force guidelines are called for, the Civilian Complaint Review Board said in its report released on Tuesday on 1,128 choke hold allegations made from 2009 to June 2014. The number of choke hold complaints in the last 12 months of that time span was the highest in more than a decade, it said. It said in 2001, four out of every 100 force complaints were about choke holds while in the first six months of this year, eight out of every 100 force complaints were about choke holds. "These findings demonstrate that, at least from the point of view of the particular experience of the complainants, police officers continue to use choke holds and the persistence of this practice puts civilians at physical risk," the CCRB said in a statement. In practice, the definition of what qualifies as a choke hold has varied, the report said, leaving officers to use neck pressure in incidents that do not qualify as choke holds. Consequently the use of choke holds has been undercounted, incidents not investigated and officers not disciplined, it said. The report said 156 incidents were not properly identified by the CCRB as choke hold cases. "For some investigators, a choke hold existed if and only if breathing was restricted, while for others, it was correctly, the presence of pressure regardless of whether breathing is restricted," the CCRB said in its statement. Police and the CCRB should create an inter-agency working group to enforce the choke hold ban and reduce such incidents, the report said. (Editing by Eric Walsh)