Antioch's City Council is considering legislation that would ban local police officers from applying knee-to-neck restraints on suspects.
Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe introduced the legislation, which includes any hold that would cause "positional asphyxiation" following the death of local Navy Vet Angelo Quinto last December.
"It could be knee-to-neck, it could be a pronged restraint, we’re going to be looking at all of them," said Thorpe.
The city passed other police reforms in February which, "certainly highlighted very many of the public comments we received about Angelo Quinto,” he said. "I’ll just say that about Angelo Quinto because we have been served with a federal civil rights lawsuit."
Angelo Quinto was killed last December after police responded to a mental health call at his family’s home. Officers used the knee-to-neck hold to restrain Quinto for multiple minutes. He became unresponsive. He never regained consciousness and died in a hospital three days later.
Last week a jury ruled Quinto’s death an accident, from "excited delirium," a controversial diagnosis that in June was denounced by the American Medical Association as a charged phrase too frequently used to justify the excessive use of force by police officers, including in cases where people die or suffer serious injuries while being restrained.
A civil suit has been filed against the officers involved in Quinto’s death as well as the Antioch Police Chief.
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