The New York Police Department has suspended an officer without pay after a video emerged in which he is seen using the banned chokehold technique in the arrest of a black man in Queens.
Citing Lori Zeno, the executive director of Queens Defenders, The New York Times reports that the shield number of the officer in the video matched Afanador’s name in a public database of federal lawsuits against the police that is maintained by the Legal Aid Society.
In a tweet Sunday evening, Commissioner Dermot F. Shea announced that after rapid probe the officer involved in the disturbing apparent chokehold incident in Queens had been suspended without pay.
In more than 30 minutes of body camera footage released by the police from the incident, Bellevue, accompanied by two other men, appear to be taunting the police for about 10 minutes while the officers “remain calm and even laugh”, The Times reports.
Afanador whose shield number matches the officer in the video could then be heard in the body camera footage telling another person that Bellevue and the other two men appear to be intoxicated.
