NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City police officer removed from duty after he was recorded putting a man in what the police commissioner said was a banned chokehold once faced criminal charges alleging he pistol-whipped a teenage suspect and broke two of his teeth.
The police department moved quickly to suspend Officer David Afanador without pay after Sunday’s confrontation on the boardwalk at Rockaway Beach in Queens.
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.
In Sunday’s incident, in the wake of protests over George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis, a video shot by one of the men involved in the altercation showed officers tackling a Black man and Afanador putting his arm around the man’s neck as he lay face down on the boardwalk.
He is scheduled to testify Monday at the state attorney general’s hearing on police officers’ rough treatment of protesters.
