NYPD ban on diaphragm compression upheld by state Court of Appeals
The Police Benevolent Association has argued the law is too vague. Credit: TNS/Bernhard Richter
The state’s highest court has upheld a measure banning the New York Police Department from compressing a suspect's diaphragm while attempting to detain or arrest suspects, a law enacted after George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minnesota in May 2020.
The state Court of Appeals, in a Monday decision, sided with the city in upholding Administrative Code 10-181, which outlines unlawful methods of restraint. The July 2020 law made it a misdemeanor for law enforcement officers to use a chokehold, or “sitting, kneeling, or standing on the chest or back in a manner that compresses the diaphragm” in New York City.
“We recognize that police officers are called upon to respond to dangerous and volatile situations requiring real-time assessment of the level of force necessary to safeguard the public and ensure officer safety,” the court wrote. “However, for criminal liability to attach under the challenged portion of Administrative Code 10-181, a particular type of pressure must be voluntarily — not accidentally — applied to an arrestee’s chest or back and such conduct must fall outside the parameters of justifiable use of physical force.”
The Police Benevolent Association argued the law is too vague, saying that it would be too difficult for an officer to discern when their actions resulted in the compression of an arrestee’s diaphragm. The union did not challenge the chokehold ban.
A spokesman for the PBA, John Nuthall, said in a statement: "While this is not the outcome we had hoped for, the Court’s decision is a victory insofar that it will provide our officers with greater certainty when it comes to the statute, because under this Court’s decision, it must be proven at a minimum that an officer’s action in fact 'impedes the person’s ability to breathe,' was 'not accidental,' and was not a 'justifiable use of physical force.' ”
"The Court's interpretation provides clarity to this vague statute, which arguably as written could have been violated by the compression of the diaphragm in any manner during the course of an arrest," the statement said.
The NYPD did not respond to a request for comment. The union had initially won a state Supreme Court decision in 2021 that struck down the measure as unconstitutionally vague in the use of the phrase “in a manner that compresses the diaphragm.”
Nicole Fuller is Newsday's senior criminal justice reporter. She began working at Newsday in 2012 and previously covered local government.
