Use of vascular neck restraints in law enforcement: A case-study of Spokane, WA

The high-profile deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd have led to legislative actions banning the use of neck restraints by law enforcement officers. The debates behind these policy changes are important, but they are also entirely lacking in any data on the actual use of neck restraints. We write neither to defend nor condemn the use of neck restraints by law enforcement; rather, we seek to provide information to assist with data-driven decision-making about the technique. We present data from a police department in Washington State where, prior to the May 2021 statewide ban on use of neck restraints, officers had used them quite regularly: 230 times over the previous eight years. Results indicate that neck restraints were typically used when dealing with subjects who were physically non-compliant or actively resisting police, were associated with use of other physical tactics (rather than weapons), yielded a lower rate of injury to subjects but a higher rate of injury to officers, and resulted in no subject fatalities.