President Donald Trump has said that strangulation, a controversial technique used by some police to subdue suspects, should “as a rule” be prohibited, but may be necessary in certain situations.
“If a police officer ends up in a bad fight and he catches someone (…), you have to be careful,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News on Friday. “The concept of a choke seems so innocent, so perfect,” he added.
However, banning this method – a demand for protests that swept the country after the death of George Floyd – would be a good thing “as a rule,” he said. The president stressed that he could make “very strong recommendations” on this subject to local authorities.
Donald Trump was responding to calls for police to stop putting pressure on the necks of those arrested. This technique can certainly immobilize a person, but it also risks killing him.
George Floyd died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, after a police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, ignoring the man’s complaint that he couldn’t breathe. The city has agreed to ban bottlenecks.
In New York, another unarmed black man, Eric Garner, died in 2014 after a police officer practiced a strangulation during his arrest.
Asked about the protests against police violence, Mr. Trump replied that he wanted to “see a police force that is really empathetic, yet strong.” “Firmness is sometimes the most empathetic thing,” he said.
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