An NYPD officer now faces up to seven years in prison for using a chokehold on a drunk, resisting suspect — the first conviction under New York City's post-George Floyd chokehold ban, and exactly the outcome critics warned would criminalize routine police work and leave cops second-guessing themselves in dangerous moments.
Officer Omar Habib was found guilty Thursday of second-degree strangulation, a violent felony, along with third-degree assault and a misdemeanor for unlawful methods of restraint under the city's 2020 law. Bronx Criminal Supreme Court Judge Cynthia Isales ordered him held without bail. He was fired from the department immediately upon conviction, as required by law.
The incident unfolded July 28, 2023, when Habib and other officers responded to a 911 call at a Bronx catering hall. Lord Nymaah had gotten into a fight at a party and was punching bathroom mirrors, according to prosecutors. His hand was cut so badly that blood soaked through the shirt he used to wrap the wound. When Habib tried to cuff him in the back of an ambulance, Nymaah — described by prosecutors as "drunk and disorderly and refused to be placed under arrest" — resisted.
Habib placed Nymaah in a chokehold. Nymaah testified: "I said, 'Why are you choking me?' He said, 'No one is choking you.'" Prosecutors said the hold was tight enough to impede breathing and circulation and caused Nymaah to temporarily lose consciousness.
Habib's defense attorney, Jacob Weinstein, argued that the evidence didn't prove the chokehold caused Nymaah to pass out — other factors, like drinking on an empty stomach, could have been responsible. And even if it did, Weinstein said, Habib "did exactly what he should have done" during a tense encounter with a resisting suspect. The jury wasn't persuaded.
The law under which Habib was convicted — New York City Statute 10-181 — was passed in the racial justice push after George Floyd's death in May 2020. It criminalizes not just chokeholds but also certain forms of pressure on an arrestee's chest or back that compress the diaphragm. Police use of chokeholds was already prohibited by NYPD policy, but officers who used them were almost never prosecuted. The law changed that calculus, turning a departmental violation into a criminal offense.
Fox News framed the conviction as the inevitable result of a law passed in a moral panic, noting the measure was challenged by police unions but upheld by New York's highest court in 2023. The New York Post, which provided more detail on the encounter itself, also noted Habib's extensive misconduct record: six lawsuits resulting in $854,000 in payouts, a substantiated 2017 chokehold allegation by the Civilian Complaint Review Board, and accusations of lying under oath and tampering with evidence in a 2016 gun raid.
Police union leaders denounced the verdict. Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association, said the conviction is "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." Scott Munro of the Detectives' Endowment Association also slammed the outcome.
The reference point for the ban was the 2014 death of Eric Garner, who died after NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo used a prohibited chokehold. Pantaleo lost his job but faced no criminal charges. The Floyd-era law was designed to ensure a different outcome next time. Now it has.
The question that remains: what happens to the next cop who faces a resisting suspect and has a split second to decide whether to use force — knowing a wrong call means a felony conviction and a prison cell?
