A Brooklyn woman who is seven-months pregnant was apparently put in a chokehold by an NYPD officer during a scuffle over illegal grilling.
Photos released Monday by advocacy group People Organizing and Working for Empowerment and Respect show an officer holding the expectant mother, identified as 27-year-old Rosan Miller, around the neck while a young child lingered in the background.
According to the Daily News, the incident went down on Saturday afternoon, after cops approached Miller and her family for illegally grilling on a public sidewalk near their East New York home. But the encounter quickly turned physical, resulting in Miller's brother, John, and her husband, Rosan, charged with harassment and obstruction of justice as well as resisting arrest and obstruction, respectively. Miller, for her part, received a summons for disorderly conduct.
Chokeholds were prohibited as a restraint tactic by the NYPD in 1993. Nevertheless, several instances of the maneuver have been widely publicized in recent weeks, following the death of Eric Garner, a Staten Island man who perished earlier this month as police restrained him in a chokehold. Garner, who suffered from asthma, repeatedly told cops that he couldn't breathe as they held him.
A video of another episode, shot three days before Eric Garner's death, show cops using a chokehold to restrain a man resisting arrest for fare-beating in an East Harlem subway station.
