re: Choke Hold Ban

I also do alot of jiu jitsu, but here's a few thoughts:

The fact that we're choking each other at jiu jitsu has a few important differences. Mainly the facts that we're all generally healthy enough to participate and we're in a controlled environment. We also don't intentionally choke each other out. The rate of tapping to a choke vs. choking out is probably in the range of 99.9 to .1%

So you have 999 choke taps to 1 choke out (maybe even less), and the 1 choke out is in a safe environment with healthy individuals.


Now if we consider the circumstances when police would choke someone:

- Chaotic environments
- Unhealthy suspects (drugged, bad hearts, etc.)
- Choking them until they stop resisting, almost certainly implying a choke out rather than a tap out

If at jiu jitsu we did not accept taps and choked out partners every single time, I do believe even in a safe environment with healthy participants we would see accidental deaths just by playing the numbers.


For police interactions I don't think choking people to stop their resistance and gain their compliance is a viable solution unless deadly force is necessary.

I think it's worth considering the fact that if you put an officer in a choke, the officer would certainly believe that to be deadly force and would be justified in shooting in response. Or, if an officer saw a partner being choked out by a suspect, the officer would be justified in running up and shooting the suspect in the head. If we recognize the use of choking against officers as a deadly force attack, we should probably also recognize that the use of chokes by officers constitutes a potentially deadly use of force.