New York City police officer arrested after apparent chokehold arrest

A New York City police officer was arrested on Thursday morning and charged with strangulation and attempted strangulation after videos emerged over the weekend that appeared to show him using an illegal chokehold to arrest a man on a boardwalk, police said.

A New York City police officer was arrested on Thursday morning and charged with strangulation and attempted strangulation after videos emerged over the weekend that appeared to show him using an illegal chokehold to arrest a man on a boardwalk, police said. The officer, David Afanador, had already been suspended from the New York Police Department without pay. Afanador, 39, was arrested at a police station house, the NYPD said. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

The NYPD has banned chokeholds since 1993, warning they can be deadly. Earlier this month, as part of a package of police reform bills spurred by the nationwide protests against police violence, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation making it a crime for officers to use chokeholds and similar neck restraints. "The ink from the pen Governor Cuomo used to sign this legislation was barely dry before this officer allegedly employed the very tactic the new law was designed to prohibit," Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, whose office is prosecuting Afanador, said in a statement.

Her office has "zero tolerance for police misconduct," and officers are trained to de-escalate volatile encounters, the statement said. Afanador's forceful arrest of Ricky Bellevue, a 35-year-old Black man, on the Rockaway Beach boardwalk in Queens on Sunday was captured on police body-cam videos, which were released by the NYPD, and cellphone videos recorded by bystanders.

Bellevue, along with two others, could be seen cursing and insulting Afanador and his colleagues for several minutes, prior to the arrest. Bellevue asks the officers if they are scared before grabbing an object from a trash can. The videos show four officers then restraining Bellevue on his stomach and one officer, Afanador, wrapping his arm around Bellevue's neck. "Yo, stop choking him, bro!" an onlooker screams as Bellevue falls limp.

Bellevue was arrested for being "disorderly" and was hospitalized after briefly falling unconscious in the officer's grip, according to his lawyers at Queens Defenders. Katz said her office had declined to prosecute Bellevue.

Scrutiny of the police has intensified across the country in the wake of the death on May 25 of George Floyd, a Black man, during an arrest in Minneapolis. Video showed a white officer with his knee on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes, giving rise to some of the largest, most sustained nationwide protests seen in the United States in decades.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)