Probe: Chief and mayor lied, held back facts in Prude case

NEW YORK — An investigation into the official response to Daniel Prude’s police suffocation death last year in Rochester, N.Y., is faulting the city’s mayor and former police chief for keeping critical details of the case secret for months and lying to the public about what they knew.

The report, commissioned by Rochester’s city council and made public Friday, said Mayor Lovely Warren lied at a September press conference when she said it wasn’t until August that she learned officers had physically restrained Prude during the March 23, 2020, arrest that led to his death.

Ms. Warren was told that very day that officers had used physical restraint, the report said, and by midApril she, then-police Chief La’Ron Singletary and other officials were aware that Prude had died as a result and that the officers were under criminal investigation.

“In the final analysis, the decision not to publicly disclose these facts rested with Mayor Warren as the elected Mayor of the City of Rochester,” the report stated, written by New York City lawyer Andrew G. Celli Jr. “But Mayor Warren alone is not responsible for the suppression of the circumstances of the Prude Arrest and Mr. Prude’s death.”

Mr. Singletary disclosed that the officers restrained Prude but “consistently deemphasized” the role of restraints in his death, nor did his statements to Ms. Warren and other officials “capture the disturbing tenor of the entire encounter,” according to the report.