Lawyer: Cops used training ‘flawlessly’

The seven Rochester cops suspended after the suffocation death of Daniel Prude followed their training “flawlessly,” a lawyer for one of the officers said Thursday.

“It’s easy from a lay person’s perspective to sit back and judge what happened on that night,” attorney James Nobles said at a news conference at the Rochester police union office to discuss the death of Prude, who was mentally ill.

“There may need to be conversations about training and conversations about who responds to a mental health intervention,” Nobles said. “But under the facts and circumstances as they’ve been provided in this case, these officers did exactly what they were trained to do and they did it flawlessly.”

Shocking body-camera video of Prude’s arrest March 23 shows cops handcuffing and placing a hood over the naked 41-year-old Black man’s head to prevent him from spitting.

The officers handcuffed Prude and threw him to the ground, and held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing, the video shows. He died a week later.

The officers’ lawyers showed a training video on a technique called “segmenting” — a tactic where one officer kneels on the back of a suspect, while a second presses down on the suspect’s head.

At one point, Nobles donned a hood similar to the one used on Prude, which he called a “spit sock.”

“You can see through it, you can hear through it, you can breathe through it,” he said.

The Monroe County medical examiner listed said Prude died “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint” and cited PCP — a drug commonly known as angel dust — as a contributing factor.

Another lawyer for the cops, Matthew Rich, said Prude’s use of PCP was “the root cause” of his death.

A small group of protesters gathered outside the police union headquarters Thursday to demand the officers’ firing. Several protesters were led away in handcuffs, including one who told officers she was 14 years old, video shows.