Video of Off-Duty Kansas City Cop Taking Down Grocery Shopper with Chokehold-Like Move Sparks Controversy

Using a move similar to a chokehold, an off-duty Kansas City cop courted controversy on Wednesday after he restrained and tackled a man who had been accused of trespassing in a local grocery store.

The video of the incident doesn’t tell the whole story, according to Kansas City, Missouri, police. They allege the man brought a gun into the store, which was not allowed.

Later, the off-duty cop asked the man to leave, but he refused, leading to an altercation with the officer and the store manager, authorities say.

“He resisted arrest and became combative,” Kansas City Police Department spokesperson Officer Alayna Gonzalez said.

That led to the takedown. In the video, the man can be heard saying, “I can’t breathe,” and “Stop choking me,” while the officer instructs him to put his hands behind his back. The man, eventually charged with trespassing and resisting arrest, also insisted that he had already placed his gun back inside his vehicle. Both the man and the officer are Black.

In a statement to the Kansas City Star, Gonzalez said the unnamed officer employed a lateral vascular neck restraint, or LVNR, a technique used by the department for more than 50 years. Gonzalez noted neither the man nor the officer were injured during the exchange.

Regardless, onlookers found it disturbing.

“Has George Floyd taught you nothing?” asked one viewer on Instagram, where the video was posted.

But one woman agreed with police that the video obscured pertinent details.

“This man showed up to this store after already being banned for shoplifting and bringing firearms and then after being told to leave he went to his car and got his gun then the police officer told him he was going to be arrested if he didn’t leave and he still refused he told people to get it on video to try and say this is brutality when this man was coming there with the intent to inflict fear and threaten the store that’s why you don’t just watch less then half of a clip and victimize a literal criminal,” she wrote.

The witness who posted the video wrote, “I guess he didn’t like what the man was saying so the officer grabbed him around the neck, choked him and slammed him on the ground.”

“The man put his hands behind his back. and then he started tapping out, but the officer continued to choke him, so that’s when I started recording,” the witness continued.

In the video, the officer can be seen applying more pressure to the man’s neck with his arm while the man attempts to rise from his kneeling position. As the man rises, the officer can be seen forcing him back to his knees, then flipping him flat to the ground. The officer uses his entire body to hold the man down, pinning each leg while the man struggles in vain to break free.

The technique used to bring the man down has its share of critics, as it’s known to restrict blood flow to the brain. Used improperly, LVNR can restrict someone’s airway, causing them to lose consciousness or suffer a traumatic injury, they say.

But police counter that the move is safer than a chokehold and lowers the odds an officer has to “pull a gun” during an arrest.

The incident will face internal review from the “entire patrol bureau chain of command,” per department policy, Gonzalez said.

She would not say whether the department believes the force used in the arrest was excessive. KCPD also declined to comment on why the officer felt it necessary to use the neck restraint.