Rochester mayor suspends officers involved in man’s suffocation death
ROCHESTER, N. Y. — Seven police officers involved in the suffocation death of Daniel Prude this spring in Rochester, N. Y., were suspended Thursday by the city’s mayor, who said she was misled for months about the circumstances of the fatal encounter.
Prude, 41, who was Black, died when he was taken off life support March 30. That was 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 suspensions at a news conference amid criticism that the city kept quiet about Prude’s death for months.
Prude “was failed by the police department, our mental health care system, our society, and he was failed by me,” Ms. Warren said.
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 had 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 what happened to Prude.
Ms. Warren did not announce any action against Chief Singletary. Approached at a community event, Chief Singletary declined to comment but said he would speak later.
Prude’s death happened just as the coronavirus was raging out of control in New York, and it received no public attention at the time.
His family held a news conference Wednesday and released police bodycam video, obtained through a public records request, that captured his fatal encounter 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 on 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, writhing and demanding that the 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 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.
In his final months, Prude, known to his Chicagobased family as “Rell,” had been having mental health problems.
“My father should have been met with a mental health specialist. He should not have been killed in the street,” his 18- year- old daughter, Tashyra Prude, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “He did not deserve that. He was treated like an animal. And I want this to be a step toward justice for not only my father, but justice for people like Breonna Taylor, who were killed by the police.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office took over the investigation of the death in April; it is still ongoing.
“No matter how you look at the situation, the man was absolutely in his birthday suit, handcuffed behind his back, on the ground already, in freezing weather,” Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, said. “How could you sit here and label that man a threat to you when he’s already cuffed up? How could you throw a bag over his head?”