COPS UNDER FIRE
7 SUSPENDED IN ROCHESTER AFTER VICTIM’S FAMILY AIRS ‘ASPHYXIATION’ VIDEO
Seven Rochester police officers involved in the suffocation death of Daniel Prude were suspended Thursday by the city’s mayor, who said she was misled for months about the circumstances of the fatal encounter.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren announced the suspensions at a news conference amid criticism the city kept quiet about Prude’s death for months.
Prude, a Black man, “was failed by the police department, our mental health care system, our society, and he was failed by me,” Warren said.
Rochester police officers encountered Prude, 41, running naked through city streets on March 23, at the peak of New York’s coronavirus pandemic. Officers put a hood over Prude’s head to stop him from spitting, then held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing. Seven days later, on March 30, he was taken off life support, and declared dead.
The mayor said she only became aware that Prude’s death involved the use of force on Aug. 4, and that Police Chief La’Ron Singletary initially portrayed it as a drug overdose, which is “entirely different” than what she witnessed in body camera video. The mayor said she told the chief she was “deeply, personally and professionally disappointed” in his failure to accurately inform her about what happened to Prude.
Prude lived in Chicago and was visiting family in Rochester when he had his fatal encounter with police. His traumatic death only came to light when his family held a news conference Wednesday and released police body camera video obtained through a public records request that captured his fatal interaction with the officers.
The videos and other records detailed how police had gone looking for Prude after he bolted from his brother’s home early March 23, hours after receiving a mental health evaluation at a hospital.
When officers found Prude he was completely naked, on the street in a light snow. He lay on the ground as they handcuffed him, then grew agitated, shouting and writhing and demanding officers give him a gun.
Officers put a hood over his head because he had been spitting and then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, police video shows.
The hoods are intended to protect officers from a detainee’s saliva and have been scrutinized as a factor in the deaths of several prisoners in recent years.
The videos show Prude, his voice muffled by the hood, begging the white officer pushing his head down to let him go. As the officer, Mark Vaughn, says, “Calm down” and “Stop spitting,” Prude’s shouts became anguished whimpers and grunts.
“OK, stop. I need it. I need it,” Prude says.
The officer lets Prude go after about two minutes when he stops moving and falls silent. Officers then notice water coming out of Prude’s mouth and call over waiting medics, who start CPR.
A medical examiner concluded that Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.” The report lists excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, as contributing factors.
Gov. Cuomo — who issued an executive order in July that transfers an investigation into the death of unarmed person in police custody from local authorities to state officials — said Thursday he watched the video Wednesday night for the first time.
“What I saw was deeply disturbing and I demand answers,” Cuomo said in a statement.
Attorney General Tish James on Thursday said she’s already opened an investigation into Prude’s death.