Probe faults mayor for keeping Prude death secret
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.
Warren was told that very day that officers had used physical restraint, the report said, and by midApril she, thenpolice 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,” said the report, 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.”
Singletary disclosed that the officers restrained Prude, but “consistently deemphasized” the role of restraints in his death, nor did his statements to Warren and other officials “capture the disturbing tenor of the entire encounter,” the report said.
Singletary’s characterization “likely impacted” how city officials viewed the matter, the report said.
Warren claimed to the public that Singletary initially told her that Prude’s death was a “drug overdose,” but Friday’s report said he never told her that. Singletary, meanwhile, failed to correct Warren’s claim during a September news conference that she was never informed that Prude’s death had been ruled a homicide, the report said. Singletary told her of the finding on April 13, the report said, characterizing his response in September that “the Mayor just said she was not” informed as “untrue statements by omission.”
Messages seeking comment were left with Warren’s spokesperson, who was among the officials scrutinized in the investigation, and a lawyer for Singletary.
Additionally, the report said, a city lawyer in August discouraged Warren from publicly disclosing Prude’s arrest or starting disciplinary action against the officers after she first viewed bodyworn camera footage of the encounter.
Prude’s death sparked several weeks of nightly protests and calls for Warren’s resignation. His family has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the police department sought to cover up the true nature of Prude’s death.