San Mateo County Sheriff Halts Carotid Restraint Use: Report

SAN MATEO COUNTY, CA — The San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office has suspended the use of the controversial carotid restraint amid widespread concerns of police brutality in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, according to a published report.

Floyd died after a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into his neck for over eight minutes.

Sheriff Carlos Bolanos issued the order earlier this week, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report.

The announcement follows state recommendations for banning the controversial technique. Gov. Gavin Newsom on June 5 ordered the state's police training agency to stop teaching carotid holds.

"We train techniques on strangleholds that put people's lives at risk," Newsom said Friday at a news conference, according to Cal Matters.

"At the end of the day, a carotid hold that literally is designed to stop people's blood from flowing into their brain, that has no place any longer in 21st Century practices and policing."

The carotid restraint, in which an officer renders a person unconscious by applying pressure to a person's vascular veins, cutting off blood flow to the brain, is different from the chokehold technique used on Floyd, in which pressure is applied to the neck and throat, cutting off air supply, USA Today reports.

Bolanos said he received dozens of emails from constituents encouraging him to ban the carotid restraint, which he acknowledged influenced his decision, according to The Chronicle report.

“I have to listen to the reasonable people who are telling us that there are some law enforcement tactics and techniques that they feel should not be used,” Bolanos told The Chronicle.

“The only reason that I hadn’t discontinued it before is as a sheriff, we run the jails. And in the jails — which is full of many people who can be violent — my deputy sheriffs and correctional officers are unarmed. So in the jail, I thought it was a valuable tool, but it doesn’t make any sense for me to allow it in the jail and not allow it outside the jail.”

The use of the carotid hold in law enforcement has a problematic history in California law enforcement.

The Los Angeles Police Commission restricted the carotid hold after a dozen black men died from the technique in police custody, according to a report in The Los Angeles Times.

Daryl Gates, the controversial former LAPD chief, attributed the deaths of blacks from the carotid hold by falsely claiming that the "veins or arteries of blacks do not open up as fast as they do in normal people," according to the report.

Read more in The San Francisco Chronicle