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I mean, he probably convened a meeting of ethics professors, focus grouped the results a bit, got a supreme court ruling and a blessing from the pope before confronting the maniac.
You've got fifteen years of martial arts training? What's the better control position to back control? What's the least damaging incapacitation you can do to a person?
Should he have gone for the Kimura and torn Neely's shoulder off? Snapped his elbows off backward? Or just punched him in the head repeatedly?
It's hard to answer such generics, there could be a number of ways depending on the situation. But yes, I think it'd be better even if he broke his shoulder or punched him out (though this is a risky one too - people may react wildly different to being punched, including possible fatal injuries) than killing him. If it were somewhere in deep self-defense friendly red state, then the calculation would be different, but in New York, with races being as they are, you're pretty much guaranteed very vigorous and politicized prosecution. This is also a component of safety - what happens after. Again, I am not saying I know the solution for this, it would be stupid for me not being there, not seeing it, to make any suggestions. It's just the choice that actually happened looks strange to me, and I wonder why was it made. No amount of low-effort mockery "yes, he should have filed a petition to Supreme Court!" is going to answer this. I don't expect anybody to know the answers, but maybe at least some higher effort thoughts than that.
It's not, you just refuse to because the answer is obvious and inconvenient. The RNC is the lowest risk to both parties. It does not sacrifice control like an armbar, it does not require coming to striking distance like mount. Back control is bar none the best control position and the RNC is the absolute least damaging and risky option to incapacitate someone.
This is the absolute minimum force possible that produces incapacity without injury in the wild majority of cases. 99%, with decimals to ten or so places.
If the RNC is not justified, then no violence is justified. The critique of "well why didn't he try some other nonspecific technique which from the keyboard I think might have had a better result after the fact?" is ridiculous.
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Pretty unnecessary response imo.
I don’t especially care about this incident anymore than I care about any of the other daily killings in NYC, but even maintaining the same hold without putting the one hand behind the head (which is what causes the downward pressure on the bloodflow) would have been both easier and less lethal. Not even saying he should have done that in the situation if the guy was violent, but if all he wanted to do was restrain him (as opposed to knock him out and dip) then almost any way of holding someone other than the really specific RNC position is less lethal.
This is either wildly wrong or extremely pedantic. And less lethal for who exactly?
…it isn’t though? Fitting your hand behind the back of somebody’s head and pushing down isn’t a natural, easy-to-fall-into movement - you might have to literally force your hand up in between their body and yours while they’re struggling - and that move is specifically what causes the blood flow to cut off. Almost every other form of back control doesn’t have that immediate risk because the RNC isn’t back control, it’s a submission. Even just take the same hand and use it to pin his arm to his body and you have a movement both less dangerous and more natural for beginners, whereas as the RNC isn’t something people know intuitively without being taught.
As for your comment about lethality, in every conversation I’d had about this event, including my comment above, I’ve very explicitly said I’m not condemning the use of lethal force, which may have literally been necessary if the guy was attacking him or somebody else on the train. I’m disagreeing with the people who are for some reason arguing that choking someone out for a long ass time doesn’t have obviously lethal potential. And if it turns out the guy wasn’t attacking anyone, for better or for worse you don’t get to knock people out just for being awful.
This is bogus.
"No, you can't carry a gun for self defense, just use martial arts"
:guy gets punched, hits head, dies:
"He should have known the risk hitting someone, he should totally have used something less damaging"
:guy gets choked, dies:
"Obviously lethal, should have used some other secret squirrel thing that only exists in the keyboard warrior's head"
:guy gets tased, dies:
" Yeah, 'less than lethal' means lethal, should have known that this could happen, deploying a taser is lethal force!"
:Guy gets pepper sprayed, dies:
"Why are people allowed to carry obviously lethal pepper spray"?
Strange how there are exactly zero responsible and reasonable uses of force, at least after the fact if something goes badly and someone dies. All the good uses of force exist.......mostly in the minds of critics.
I‘m fine with people carrying and using guns, tasers, and pepper spray in self defense. Not that these are valid comparisons, the latter two are pretty obviously less likely to result in a dead guy than choking.
Maybe you think you’re responding to someone other than the guy who’s said like five times that lethal force could be valid in this situation.
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In fact, the pepper spray one happened less than a week later. Nobody died, the pepper-sprayer was charged.
New York State prohibits civilians carrying tasers; while this law was found unconstitutional by a federal court, weapons decisions don't count so you can still get busted for it.
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Maybe he wanted to just knock him out as opposed to restrain him for an indeterminate amount of time?. Being so close to a Vagrant like Neely mustn't be very fun.
Yeah I was gonna say actually knocking him out and withdrawing quickly could have made sense, if the guy was attacking him at least. If you can’t land it perfectly just applying sustained pressure to the throat for a long time is dicier though. And if the guy doesn’t turn out to have attacked anyone, you can’t just knock someone out for being really awful to be around.
How do you knock someone out?
From that position? You lock your bicep on one side of the neck and forearm on the other, then pin that hand to your other upper arm to keep it locked. Then take your other hand and push down on the back of the head and it’ll cut off bloodflow, causing someone to go unconscious. It looks like this all together.
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