A New York police officer was suspended on Sunday after a video posted online appeared to show him putting a Black man in a chokehold during an arrest.
The New York Police Department banned the use of chokeholds in 1993.
But the death of George Floyd after a police officer knelt on his neck while detaining him in Minneapolis on May 25 has put police tactics and methods in the spotlight again.
“After a swift investigation by the Internal Affairs Bureau, a police officer involved in a disturbing apparent chokehold incident in Queens has been suspended without pay”, New York City Police commissioner Dermot Shea said in a tweet on Sunday.
“While a full investigation is still underway, there is no question in my mind that this immediate action is necessary”, Shea said.
The video posted online showed many officers restraining the man on his stomach. One officer appeared to have his arm wrapped around the man’s neck, the video showed.
The man was hospitalised late on Sunday, NBC News reported .
On Thursday, the New York City Council overwhelmingly passed a bill that would order the city’s police force to itemise and explain its surveillance gear.
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has said he will sign the bill into law.
The legislation, which had been in limbo for years, comes amid changes in policies around policing following Floyd's death, which has led to demonstrations against police brutality and racism across the US and around the world.
Barr ‘waste of time’
US attorney-general William Barr deserves to be impeached over the firing of a federal prosecutor whose office had been investigating President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer but the effort would be a “waste of time”, a leading Democratic lawmaker said on Sunday.
Jerrold Nadler, the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee chairman who helped lead the Trump impeachment hearings last year, told CNN’s State of the Union that the Republican-led Senate would block any effort to sanction Barr.
“He certainly deserves impeachment. But again, that’s a waste of time because the Republicans in the Senate won’t look at that,” Nadler said.
The firing of Geoffrey Berman, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, was the latest in a series of moves by Barr that critics say aim to benefit Trump politically.
