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NYPD officer told himself 'I'm done' after illegally choking man, Bronx prosecutors say
By
Samantha Max
Published Aug 20, 2025
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José A. Alvarado Jr. / Gothamist
By
Samantha Max
Published Aug 20, 2025
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A Bronx judge has ruled that recorded statements an NYPD officer made to himself while alone in his patrol car moments after prosecutors say he choked a man unconscious can be played for jurors at his criminal trial.
Officer Omar Habib’s body camera was still recording as he drove away from the scene in July 2023. On it, he can be heard asking himself “What’d you do, bro?” and uttering, “I’m done,” according to prosecutors and footage played in court on Tuesday.
Last year, the Bronx district attorney’s office accused Habib of placing a man in a chokehold that was so tight he couldn’t breathe and temporarily lost consciousness. Habib was the first Bronx officer to be indicted under a 2020 local law that banned police chokeholds and other restraints that can impede breathing, according to the DA’s office. Years earlier, records show, the NYPD disciplined him for putting someone else in a chokehold.
Habib pleaded not guilty in August 2024 to charges of strangulation, criminal obstruction of breathing or blood circulation, assault, and using an unlawful method of restraint. If convicted of the most serious charge, he could face up to seven years in prison.
At a hearing Tuesday morning, prosecutors played Habib’s body camera footage from the night that led to his arrest. He was responding to a call at a catering hall on Eastchester Road involving an intoxicated man who had gotten into a fight, according to the DA’s office and body camera video.
In the footage, Habib stands inside the back of an ambulance and can be heard telling the man that he’s going to the hospital and then will be under arrest for fighting and breaking glass. The video shows the man repeatedly questioning why he’s being arrested and refusing to turn around to be handcuffed. Then, Habib and several other officers try to restrain him.
This is when, prosecutors allege, Habib puts the man in a chokehold. His body camera shows him and other officers struggling to cuff the man in the back of the ambulance, but his exact actions are difficult to make out because of the angle of the camera. Videos of the incident recorded on other officers’ body cameras from different perspectives were not shown at the hearing but are expected to be played at trial.
After the man is cuffed, police can be heard in the video telling him to get up, but he doesn’t move right away.
“Is he playing around? Get up,” Habib said, according to a transcript of his statements in the video from the DA’s office.
Shortly after, the man gets up and can be heard in the video accusing Habib of choking him.
“Nobody choked you, bro,” Habib responds, according to the transcript. “You’re awake, right? You’re breathing?”
Habib eventually steps out of the ambulance, gets into his police car and can be heard loudly exhaling in the video. His body camera continues to record as he drives to the hospital where the man is going for treatment. That is when he makes the statements lawyers are disputing: asking himself what he did and saying he’s “done.”
Justice Cynthia Isales said she would need to listen back to the footage herself, because it was difficult to hear over the loudspeaker in the courtroom.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Habib’s defense attorney, Jacob Weinstein, asked the judge to prevent a jury from hearing the statements prosecutors say were made in the police car if his case goes to trial. He also sought the suppression of another statement the officer allegedly made off-camera to his partner about asking the man not to pursue a complaint against him and appealing to him based on their shared Muslim faith.
Habib’s lawyer has argued that the statements should not be allowed at trial because they were not made voluntarily. In court, he doubted whether the officer made the off-camera statements to his partner at all.
“Suppression is a must,” Weinstein said.
But Assistant DA Tyler Gibson argued that a jury should be able to hear the statements, because he said Habib wasn’t under arrest at the time or coerced into saying them. He maintained that the statements were as prosecutors described them, and said the judge would hear what Habib said on camera with headphones on.
“It’s overwhelming what happened here,” Gibson said.
Isales ruled at the end of the hearing that she would allow a jury to hear Habib’s statements that were recorded on his body camera — but not the alleged statement that didn’t appear in the recording.
Throughout the hearing, Habib sat beside his lawyer with his shoulders hunched, occasionally wiping his face or running his fingers through his slicked back hair. According to NYPD records, he is currently assigned to the PSA 5 Viper unit, which monitors surveillance footage in public housing complexes.
Habib came under scrutiny years earlier, after ProPublica and The City published a video that showed him using a chokehold on a man in an elevator in 2017. The incident predated city and state laws that now prohibit police chokeholds, but the NYPD had already banned the tactic.
Police records show Habib joined the NYPD in 2007. In September 2016 and March 2018, he was awarded for “meritorious police duty,” according to his profile on the department’s website. Civilian Complaint Review Board records show he has faced seven complaints, five of which were substantiated. Most recently, the police watchdog agency substantiated charges against him for verbal sexual harassment and discourtesy. Discipline in that case is still pending.
In 2011, the NYPD suspended Habib without pay for five days and forced him to give up 35 vacation days, according to police records. In 2019, the department docked him 30 days for wrongfully using force and failing to document his use of force accurately in paperwork. The NYPD placed him on dismissal probation for a year in both cases, department records show.
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Samantha Max
Samantha reports on whether New Yorkers feel safe and whether the institutions that are supposed to protect them are working. Before coming to WNYC/Gothamist, she spent three years covering the criminal justice system in Tennessee for Nashville Public Radio. Her reporting on Nashville's police department received multiple awards, including the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize. Samantha was also part of the inaugural class of Report for America, a service journalism program that sends up-and-coming reporters to local newsrooms across the country. She is a Northwestern University grad, a Baltimore native and fluent in Spanish. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal: samanthamaxwnyc.93.
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