A new inspector general blasted the New York City Police Department for failing to punish officers who used banned chokeholds on citizens, sometimes as a first response in a confrontation.
The first official report by police Inspector General Philip Eure, released Monday, comes a month after New York was shaken first by a grand jury's decision not to indict an NYPD officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner and then by the killing of two NYPD officers by a gunman avenging the Staten Island man's death.
It looked at 10 recent cases in which the NYPD's Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), an independent agency tasked with investigating excessive force claims, concluded officers used chokeholds, which are banned by Police Department regulations. The cases were investigated between 2009 and July 2014 and do not include Garner's death on July 17, 2014.