As someone who took BJJ for 3 years, and has a few police officer friends who have explained how their self defense training is operated by BJJ specialists...
This was murder. You learn in week one of BJJ the difference between blood chokes and air chokes. You learn how long it takes a person to pass out and how long it takes for them to die from each.
For reference, blood chokes (literally cutting off the blood/corotid artery to the brain)can make someone pass out in literally seconds, think UFC chokes (almost all used are blood) and how fast the defender taps out or is passed out once the hold is properly "sunk" in. They take about 3 min to kill someone but only 1-2 min to cause permanent brain damage. Air chokes take about 3-4 min to make someone pass out and only another couple minutes to kill (call it 5-6).
If you watched the whole videa, as gut wrenching as it was, you see the man pass out at about the 4 minute mark, which points to the air choke timing I mentioned, 3-4 min. He was still alive at that point, but probably died a minute or 2 later.
Knee to the neck is a valid thing to do in order to subdue a resisting suspect, but there are a few things that all trained officers are told about knee to the neck:
1. It absolutely can and will (depending on pressure/weight of officer) cut off the air/breathing of the suspect. So it is an air choke (see timings above).
2. They should ONLY use it to subdue IN AN EMERGENCY. It is not their first, second, or third form of subduing a resisting suspect.
3. They are also told that AS SOON AS the suspect is subdued (in cuffs) that the knee to the neck has to be removed.
All of that means the knee to the neck should be applied for no more than 30-60 seconds during the actual "struggle" and removed as soon as the suspect is in hand cuffs.
Either this officer was SEVERELY undertrained or he KNEW what he was doing and murdered this man.
It's simple, he gets fired either way. If he went through ANY ground fighting training he would have been trained on this. I seriously was explained all this during WEEK ONE of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training and BJJ experts train most police forces in ground fighting. If he was trained, then he should be charged with murder.
Also, the other 3 officers should be fired, and if they were trained they should be charged with manslaughter for not stopping the knee.
