With an arm wrapped around him from behind, that seems unnecessary to me. I would hope for smarter approaches. Talk to him until he’s convinced or bored and gets in the car. Tasers. Pepper spray. The guy wasn’t menacing anyone, so it seems reasonable to use low contact / violence methods of arrest.
Once, there was a crazy guy in Seattle wielding a sword. The cops got him cornered. They couldn’t figure out how to take him down for a few hours. So, they surrounded him, and waited until someone came up with a good idea. Eventually, they called the fire department and hosed him down until he dropped the sword and they sprayed it away from him.
I see that video and it seems like they went with plan A: Attack. Seems unnecessary.
The guy died of a heart attack and was asthmatic. I’m thinking that taser and pepper spray would have likely had the same results.
You must have watched an edited video. He tried to flee from the cops, albeit in slow motion due to his condition. If anyone can be faulted for Garner’s death, it would have been the paramedics that did not treat his condition. And I would still demand an investigation of that coroner, because that headlock from what I saw of it would not have damaged the trachea as the coroner claimed.