NYPD response to new chokehold video sign of 'unprecedented times,' says Shea

NEW YORK - The swift action of suspending an NYPD officer after he was seen on video putting a Black man in what officials say was a banned chokehold is a sign of “unprecedented times,” Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said Monday.

“I think we have an obligation to act swiftly but we also have to get it right and to inform the public about what’s going on,” Shea said on TV station NY1.

Shea announced the suspension on Sunday hours after Officer David Afanador used what the commissioner called “an apparent chokehold” during a confrontation on a boardwalk in the Rockaway section of Queens.

A video shot by one of the men involved in the altercation showed officers tackling a Black man, with one officer putting his arm around his neck as he lay face down on the boardwalk.

Body camera footage released later by police showed that for at least 11 minutes before the arrest, three men were shouting insults at the police while the officers implored them to walk away.

“I put out the body camera footage yesterday and I think it tells a very different story than the initial video,” Shea said. “But ultimately, you know, the hand around the neck is the hand around the neck and I dealt with that swiftly."

It's at least the second time Afanador has been suspended from the force. The officer was sidelined after his 2014 arrest, only to return to duty after a judge acquitted him and his partner of all charges in 2016.

In that case, Afanador was seen on video using his gun to hit a 16-year-old boy during a marijuana bust. The beating continued until the boy dropped to the ground and was handcuffed. That altercation, which came six weeks after the police chokehold death of Eric Garner, also made news headlines.

Afanador was involved in eight incidents that were the subject of complaints to the city’s police watchdog agency since joining the police department in 2005, according to records obtained Monday under a new state law making disciplinary files public.

They ranged from using discourteous language to use of physical force and refusing to seek medical treatment. All of the allegations to the city’s Civilian Complaint Review were either unsubstantiated or led to exoneration except for the ones stemming from the altercation that led to his arrest.

The use of chokeholds has long been banned by the New York Police Department and has been especially fraught since the 2014 death of Eric Garner after an officer put him in a chokehold while trying to arrest him.

The speed with which the officer involved in Sunday's encounter was suspended stood in sharp contrast to the drawn-out police disciplinary process of years past.

“I think it’s unprecedented times,” Shea said when asked about the swift suspension, alluding to the public's demand for police accountability since the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month.

Shea said he does not believe there is systemic racism in the NYPD.