NEW YORK — The attorney representing a man allegedly assaulted by a New York State trooper on Sept. 5 in Claverack asked the Office of the New York Inspector General on Tuesday to investigate the incident.
In a letter to Inspector General Lucy Lang and emailed to Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka, Leo Glickman of the Manhattan law firm Stoll, Glickman & Bellina requested an inquiry into the alleged assault on Duhamel Johnson by an on-duty state trooper and said he has video of the incident.
The trooper, who was not named in Glickman’s letter, allegedly applied a chokehold on Johnson.
“Somehow, some police officers have not gotten the message that chokeholds and generally cutting off the breathing of a person they are arresting is illegal and a crime,” Glickman wrote. “Mr. Johnson was unarmed and not fighting back. It needs to stop and it needs to stop now before another person is maimed or killed by a police chokehold.”
Johnson, 31, of Philmont, was charged with two counts of third-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance with intent to sell, a class B felony; second-degree assault, a class D felony; resisting arrest and obstruction of governmental administration, both class A misdemeanors. He was sent to the Columbia County Jail, according to state police in Poughkeepsie.
“We’re obviously stunned that in 2023 a state trooper still feels he has the authority to place a man into a chokehold,” Glickman said. “And that he did so when Mr. Johnson was not resisting and not fighting makes the chokehold even more egregious. I hope the Inspector General holds this trooper accountable.”
Glickman said he did not know the identity of the state trooper.
Inspector General Communications Director David King said Wednesday that the office does not confirm or comment on existing or possible investigations.
Johnson was hurt in the incident, but he did not suffer any serious physical injuries, according to Glickman’s letter.
“Nevertheless, our state must hold police officers accountable for this dangerous and illegal practice to deter others from doing the same,” Glickman wrote.
According to the letter, Johnson was riding in the back seat of a taxi on Fish and Game Road near the intersection of Union Turnpike in Claverack when the taxi was pulled over by state troopers. Without offering an explanation, the trooper who put him in a chokehold attacked Johnson, Glickman wrote.
Apparently, Glickman wrote, the trooper did not turn on his body-worn camera in violation of state law and official state police policy. By law, the camera is supposed to be switched on immediately before an officer gets out of his vehicle “to interact with a person or situation.”
The taxi driver got out of his car and started taking video soon after the alleged attack on Johnson began. According to Glickman, the video “shows the trooper choking Mr. Johnson and cutting off his breathing while covering up his actions by yelling at him to ‘stop grabbing at me,’ which Mr. Johnson is not doing. Mr. Johnson can be heard struggling to tell the police he can’t breathe.”
The five-page State Police Use of Force Policy includes provisions about chokeholds. According to the policv, “Use of any chokeholds which may hinder or reduce the intake of air should only be employed when deadly physical force is justified.” The policy further states that use of a chokehold when it is not objectively reasonable is a violation of criminal law.
“Still, the state trooper in the video felt entitled and authorized to put Mr. Johnson in a chokehold even though he was no threat to him or anyone else, much less a threat that justified deadly force,” Glickman wrote.
Glickman reached out to the Inspector General’s Office for another reason, according to his letter.
“In court last week, a witness overheard the Assistant District Attorney from Columbia County laughingly ask how Mr. Johnson could say he could not breathe if he really could not breathe,” Glickman wrote.
In the wake of the deaths of Eric Garner, George Floyd and others, many state legislatures and law enforcement agencies developed policies that police use of chokeholds and other methods that cut off breathing violate departmental policies and is a crime.
The Columbia County District Attorney’s Office did not immediately reply to a request for comment.