Selling cigarettes is something you issue a citation for (or, according to the person making the recording, breaking up a fight), not something you use a choke hold for. And aren’t chokeholds something from the fucking 70’s? It is KNOWN that unless they are used carefully, they kill people. You can cut off oxygen too long, collapse the wind pipe, or–as appears to have happened in this case–trigger a heart attack. That’s why cops have been carrying tasers for 20 years.
Police, when they take the job, understand they are granted both power AND responsibility. This is no different in principle than a surgeon fucking up a heart surgery. They are paid to do it right, and there need to be consequences when they do it wrong.
An issue that is becoming increasingly obvious with cameras everywhere is that some cops seem to view all resistance to their authority as a pissing contest which they refuse to lose. This guy was mouthing off at them, but likely because they have hassled him many times. They arrested him basically because he wasn’t sufficiently obsequious. I worked for a police department in college, and repeatedly saw “Arrested for Resisting Arrest”. I was never able to work out the logic of that. A more accurate phrasing might be “pissed me off.” I would suspect that some cops make this particular arrest much, much more than others. The others are the ones to be trusted, in all likelihood.
This is very different from the Michael Brown case. There were plenty of cops, and Garner did not offer resistance. Even when they were taking him down he didn’t try to hit anyone.