Chokeholds haven’t as much of a problem in Chicago as they have been in other cities — particularly Los Angeles, where for years officers were extensively trained in using the technique as part of standard procedure, said Craig Futterman, a civil rights attorney who represents a coalition of community groups that is a party to the consent decree. One author found sixteen instances of Los Angeles residents — nearly all of them black men — dying from police chokeholds.

The chokehold should be banned, Futterman said. “It’s dangerous. It kills people. In lots of cases it’s resulted in completely unnecessary deaths,” he said. Police officers “have lots of other tools that are far less risky than choking someone.”

Read more at The Chicago Reporter