WASHINGTON DC (RIA Novosti): The US Department of Justice announced on Tuesday a ban on law enforcement using unwarranted strangulation and limited police ability to conduct unannounced raids.
“The Department of Justice today announced law enforcement-wide rules that prohibit the use of rear strangulation and constriction of the carotid artery, unless the use of lethal force is permissible and limits the reason for federal law enforcement to conduct unannounced raids,” – stated in the statement of the department.
An exception to the use of suffocation can be made only if “the police officer has a reasonable expectation that the person being detained poses an imminent threat of death or injury to a police officer or other person,” the report says.
Prohibited techniques are a chokehold hand grip from behind, when the police officer squeezes the detainee’s neck with his forearm, and a grip where the neck is pinched in the elbow joint and pressure is applied from both sides in order to block the carotid artery and lose consciousness by the held person.
“Building trust and confidence between the police and the public we serve is a key aspect of the Justice Department’s mission,” said US Attorney General Merrick Garland in connection with the ban.
The Ministry of Justice notes that the decision to ban was made following the results of the analysis carried out by the department jointly with other structures of law enforcement agencies.
The reason for the start of such an investigation was a series of notorious incidents, when police strangling techniques led to the death of the detainees.
The most notorious of these were the deaths of African Americans Eric Garner in New York and George Floyd in Minneapolis .
Garner died in 2014 during his arrest on suspicion of clandestinely selling cigarettes, Floyd – on suspicion of trying to pay off in a store with a counterfeit $ 20 bill in the summer of 2020. Both men of large physique repeated the phrase “I cannot breathe” during the arrest, but the police continued to use suffocation techniques.
