An NYPD cop was convicted by a Bronx jury Thursday of using an illegal chokehold on a suspect, the first time an officer has been tried since a local law prohibiting the tactic was enacted in the wake of murder of George Floyd.
The crime, unlawful method of restraint, is a misdemeanor, but Officer Omar Habib was also convicted of strangulation, a felony, resulting in his automatic dismissal from the NYPD.
The 19-year NYPD veteran was also convicted of misdemeanor assault and now faces up to seven years in state prison when he is sentenced.
After the jury announced its verdict, Bronx Criminal Supreme Court Judge Isales ordered him held on Rikers Island without bail as he awaits sentencing.
Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents Habib, blasted the verdict.
Hendry called the convictions “further proof of a grim reality: every second police officers spend on this job puts them at risk of criminal prosecution, and pervasive anti-police propaganda has made it incredibly difficult to receive a fair trial.”
The victim in the case had earlier testified he had no plans to pursue a criminal case against Habib, who apologized for using a chokehold on him — until he saw the officer’s body-worn camera video and watched as he lost consciousness.
“He choked me,” Lord Nyamah said of Officer Omar Habib. “He had me cuffed behind my back. He grabbed my neck.”
Before seeing the video, Nyamah was fine with moving on with his life, noting that when Habib apologized to him a few minutes after the incident, he told the cop, “Don’t worry. I’m not going to press any charges.”
“I don’t want you to lose your job,” he remembered telling Habib. “But (the cop) said, ‘I’m going to be fired anyway.’”
During cross-examination, Habib’s defense attorney, Jacob Weinstein, tried to prove several other factors could have led to Nyamah falling unconscious, including how much blood he lost by punching a mirror and that he had not eaten much food before drinking.
He even got Nyamah to admit that, as a semi-pro boxer in Guyana in his late teens and early 20s, he took several blows to the body and head, some of which knocked him out.
During his his opening argument, Weinstein said the body-worn camera video, which prosecutors had to slow down and freeze at points to show the chokehold, doesn’t show the whole story.
“We’re talking about a moment in time, splitting a hair,” he said about the snippet of video. “But as you all know, life is not a moment in time. It’s clear (Habib) was only doing his job.”
But Assistant District Attorney Michael Naughton in his opening argument told the court Habib was breaking the law, not enforcing it.
“You will know it when you see it,” he said of the video.
Habib, who was suspended for 30 days after his arrest, had since then been on modified assignment, working without a gun and shield monitoring NYCHA surveillance cameras.
He is no stranger to controversy.
NYPD Officer Omar Habib
A chokehold allegation made against him by a man he arrested in 2017 resulted in a lawsuit the city settled two years ago for $744,000. As a result, Habib lost 30 days’ pay and was placed on dismissal probation for a year.
According to discipline records, he lost 40 days’ pay after he was accused of using excessive force for punching a handcuffed prisoner in the face in 2009.
And in 2020, the Daily News reported that one Bronx gun suspect was acquitted and two others were allowed to withdraw felony guilty pleas after Habib admitted evidence in the case had been tampered with.
Habib is the first NYPD officer tried under a city law passed in the wake of Floyd’s 2020 murder by a cop in Minneapolis. The law bars police from using chokeholds or any form of physical restraint that can restrict a suspect’s ability to breathe.
Police unions challenged the law but the state’s highest court upheld it in late 2023.
The NYPD did not comment on the guilty verdict but noted the Internal Affairs Bureau started an investigation after the incident, then referred the case to the Bronx District Attorney,