#Mayor de Blasio finds silver lining in NYPD chokehold controversy

There’s a silver lining to the video of an NYPD cop appearing to use an illegal chokehold on a suspect, Mayor Bill de Blasio said today.

“Two things happened in this incident we did not see enough in the past,” De Blasio said during his daily press briefing Monday. “Very fast immediate display of action — suspension within hours and the beginning of a larger disciplinary process. And we saw another officer intervene, and that represents the best of our police not letting something like that happen.”

Officer David Afanador — who was seen with his arm around the neck of a man who was lying prone as he was arrested on the Rockaway boardwalk — was suspended hours after a video of the incident went public.

The NYPD swiftly released more than 30 minutes of body-camera footage from the incident.

“This is the fastest the NYPD has ever acted,” Hizzoner said.

Then there’s the unnamed officer who could be seen tapping Afanador on the shoulder to get him to release the seemingly unconscious man.

“The future will be officers stepping forward stopping the bad things from happening, and standing up and living up to their oath — and I have a lot of faith that our officers will do that — and the department acting swiftly and transparently to discipline any officer that does the wrong thing,” de Blasio said, calling the intervening officer “the best of our police.”

De Blasio called the footage “disturbing to watch and unacceptable,” and said he had no idea why the officer used the forbidden tactic “after everyone in the world knows chokeholds are bad.”

The incident also came days after the New York City Council made it a criminal offense for cops to use chokeholds.

But the mayor stopped short of saying whether Afanador should be criminally charged.

“I don’t get into the work of the DAs,” he said. “I respect their judgment. What I focus on is the piece that we control which is the NYPD disciplinary process.”

During a Monday morning interview with NY1, Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said the NYPD had “an obligation to act swiftly” because “it’s unprecedented times.”

Aside from the apparent chokehold, according to Shea, the officers involved in the Sunday confrontation acted appropriately.

“I think it was a completely different story when New Yorkers look at what those officers were dealing with for 15 to 20 minutes,” the top cop said. “As for the officers’ actions there yesterday, if you take away the hand around the neck, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now…. I feel for the officers there yesterday, with these three — I’ll be kind and say gentlemen — on the boardwalk. And I feel for everyone that has to walk by and ride a bike and have kids walking by these three.”

The body camera footage shows the suspect and two other men arguing with cops over an earlier encounter, not seen in the initial cell phone video.

“They were all talking all types of crazy stuff to us. We did nothing. I don’t care. Anybody can say whatever they want to us,” Afanador can be heard explaining to a female bystander. “What changed everything is when he grabbed something and squared off, and was gonna hit my officer who’s standing over there.”

“That’s when everything changed,” he continued. “The minute I saw him flex on him, that’s when he goes down, cause we don’t get hurt and we’re not gonna leave somebody violent out here who might do that to one of you or another innocent person.”

The encounter came amid tensions over the police-involved death of George Floyd, who was black — and protests that ensued across the nation.

Shea said, however, that he does “not believe there’s systemic racism in the NYPD.”

“I think there is racism in the world, we are certainly not immune to it, you will have isolated incidents,” he explained. “I think we have an extremely professional police force. I think we train as best as we can, but we’re not throwing up our hands and saying we can’t do anything else. I think we continue to look for ways to get better.”