Black man killed by Rochester police ‘failed’ by society, mayor says

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The mayor of New York’s third-largest city on Thursday suspended a group of police officers involved in the suffocation death of a Black man last March.

Daniel Prude, 41, died March 30 when his family took him off life support seven days after officers who encountered him running naked through the street put a hood over his head to stop him from spitting, then held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing.

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren announced the suspension of the officers at a Thursday press conference.

“Mr. Daniel Prude was failed by the police department, our mental health care system, our society and he was failed by me,” Warren said.

Prude’s death happened just as the coronavirus was raging out of control in New York and received no public attention at the time.

On Wednesday, Prude’s family held a news conference and released police body camera video obtained through a public records request that captured his fatal interaction with the officers.

Prude had been taken to a Rochester hospital for a mental health evaluation about eight hours before the encounter that led to his death. He was released back into the care of his family, and abruptly ran into the street and took off his clothes.

Prude had been traumatized by the deaths of his mother and a brother in recent years, having lost another brother before that, his aunt Letoria Moore said in an interview. In his final months, he’d been going between his Chicago home and his brother’s place in Rochester because he wanted to be close to him, she said.

She knew her nephew had some psychological issues, she said. “I didn’t know … why he was going through what he was going through that night, but I know he didn’t deserve to be killed by the police,” she said.