Because it leads to another interesting police/EMS interaction, I'd like to shed a little light on how Eric Garner died. He was not 'choked' to death. The choke

Because it leads to another interesting police/EMS interaction, I'd like to shed a little light on how Eric Garner died. He was not 'choked' to death. The choke hold only lasted a second or two, and wasn't even really an effective choke hold. He died because he was placed on his stomach, with his arms handcuffed behind his back. This, combined with the fact that he was overweight made it impossible for him to breath effectively [1]. The 'interesting' (and depressing) thing is that the EMS crew that responded should have recognized this and had the cops reposition him. Instead, they just went with the flow, and didn't intervene... The one positive that has come out of his death is that his case is now the go-to example used to show EMS students how not to handle situations like that, and how to be an advocate for their patients. [1] It's actually a bit more complicated than that... if he were just 'resting' in that position, he likely would be fine, but his inability to breathe deeply prevented his body from being able to compensate for various processes that kicked into overdrive when he was resisting the cops, but the tl; dr; is that if he had been placed on his back, or sitting up, he would almost certainly still be alive. Placing him on his stomach was against NYPD policy, and both the cops and EMTs/paramedics should have known better.