The problems I saw with the “choke hold” was that instead of creating a little space across the wind pipe caused by the crook in the arm inside the elbow, , the person applying the hold couldn’t or didn’t extend their arm all the way over to pressure the carotid on the far side, so their forearm crushed the wind pipe. Some people have died from this. One I remember with LAPD in the 1980s.
I had short arms and it’s something I was aware of the three times I actually applied the hold.
Our director banned it because of the problems in LA.
The LAPD police chief said that black peoples throats don’t open as quickly as normal peoples.
That caused a real uproar among blacks and jokes among the Cops who started referring to their patrol cars as “ Blacks and Normals”.