A police officer who was allowed to keep his job after putting a bystander in a chokehold in 2017 was indicted by the Bronx district attorney on Thursday for allegedly using the same potentially deadly tactic once again — this time in an incident where the person passed out.
DA Darcel Clark’s office said Officer Omar Habib is the first cop in the borough to be charged under a new law banning chokeholds passed by the City Council in July 2020 — just a few weeks after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The statute makes it a misdemeanor for police to compress a person’s windpipe, carotid arteries or diaphragm in the course of making an arrest.
The law faced years of legal challenges by the city police officers union and other law enforcement unions but was affirmed by the New York Court of Appeals in November.
Habib, who has been with the NYPD since 2007, has twice been put on a yearlong probation for serious misconduct — including for a 2017 choking incident that was previously reported by THE CITY and ProPublica And in 2019 he scuttled a gun-arrest case by testifying in court that cops tampered with evidence at the scene. He has maintained his employment all the while.
The latest case involves officers who responded on July 28, 2023, to a catering hall on Eastchester Road, where Bronx prosecutors say a “drunk and disorderly” man was refusing to be placed under arrest.
The DA’s office alleged in a press release that Habib put the arrestee in such a tight chokehold that it “impeded the man’s breathing and circulation, resulting in his temporary loss of consciousness”
In addition to being charged with violating the chokehold ban, Habib was charged in Bronx Supreme Court with felony strangulation in the second degree, and misdemeanor charges of assault and obstruction of breathing, according to the DA’s office.
The 40-year-old cop was arraigned and released Thursday on his own recognizance, with the next court date scheduled for October, that office said.
The NYPD press office said Habib has been suspended without pay, but declined further comment.
Jacob Weinstein, an attorney for Habib, told THE CITY, “He will be completely vindicated of these allegations.”
Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry, whose union was among those to challenge the chokehold ban, said in a statement that, ”Like anyone else, criminally accused police officers are presumed innocent until proven guilty and are entitled to due process and a fair hearing on the facts and the law.”
Attempts to reach the man who was allegedly choked were unsuccessful.
‘Get This Man Off the Force’
Habib was among a group of officers that responded on Thanksgiving 2017 to a disturbance at a supportive housing development in the South Bronx, which served homeless adults with histories of mental illness or substance abuse.
He was on an elevator with a resident, Dennis Prewitt, when the two began to exchange words, according to video of the incident.
When the elevator doors opened, Habib and other cops got out while Prewitt and a friend stayed behind. Prewitt said he called the group “Keystone Kops,” which so enraged Habib that he came back to the elevator, put Prewitt in a chokehold and punched him, the recording shows.
A responding officer came into the elevator and Tased Prewitt, who ended up immobile on the floor.
That incident was reported by THE CITY and ProPublica in a 2021 investigation that found that despite a decades-old prohibition on the use of chokeholds in the NYPD, not a single cop was fired for using one between Eric Garner’s chokehold death in 2014 and 2020.
In those same years, the Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated 40 instances of chokehold use by police — including by Habib in the elevator in late 2017.
At the time the article was published, the NYPD refused to reveal whether Habib had been disciplined. It has since been revealed that he lost 30 vacation days and was put on probation for one year.
Prewitt, who wasn’t arrested or charged following the run-in with Habib, has a lawsuit pending from 2019 against all of the officers involved.
“I find this to be very, very shocking news to me and a little bit too late because I could have died,” he said of Habib’s arrest.
“I’m grateful to be alive but, God, get this man off the force,” he added. “He hid behind a badge, a gun and a uniform, and I don’t find that healthy for the public.”
Prewitt’s attorney, Mike Braverman, said Habib should have been arrested for assault in the 2017 case.
“They finally indicted the guy,” Braverman told THE CITY. “He’s a bad cop that should have been removed from the force years ago.”
Going back further, Habib was accused of punching a handcuffed suspect in the face in September 2009, with less than three years on the job, according to police disciplinary records.
This was after Habib took the person, who is not identified in the records, to The Bronx’s 40th Precinct station bathroom to conduct a search for contraband following the individual’s arrest on an open warrant.
Breaking protocol, Habib shut the bathroom door when he was with the handcuffed suspect, one of his colleagues testified at the disciplinary trial a few years later.
An NYPD administrative judge credited the victim’s testimony in sentencing Habib not just because it was bolstered by circumstantial evidence presented by three NYPD members, but because Habib’s testimony about whether he saw bruising under the suspect’s eye was “inconsistent.”
The judge wrote that Habib “flip-flopped in his trial testimony regarding this matter.” Habib was hit with one year probation, five days suspension and the loss of 35 vacation days in that case.
