No charges against officers involved in Daniel Prude’s death
Police officers who put a hood over the head of a mentally distraught Black man, then pressed his body against the pavement until he stopped breathing will not face criminal charges after a grand jury declined to indict them, New York’s attorney general announced Tuesday.
Daniel Prude, 41, died last March, several days after his encounter with police in Rochester, New York. Police initially described his death as a drug overdose. It went mostly unnoticed. But nightly protests erupted after body camera video was released nearly six months later following pressure from Prude’s family.
Attorney General Letitia James, whose office took over the investigation, said her office had “presented the strongest case possible” to the grand jury, but couldn’t persuade it that the officers had committed a crime.
“I know that the Prude family, the Rochester community and communities across the country will rightfully be disappointed by this outcome,” said James, who traveled to Rochester to announce the grand jury’s decision at a church near where Prude was fatally injured.
She said she was bound to respect the grand jury’s decision, but she also condemned a system that she said had “frustrated efforts to hold law enforcement officers accountable for the unjustified killing of African Americans.”
“What binds these cases is a tragic loss of life in circumstances in which the death could have been avoided,” said James, who, like the mayor of Rochester and the city’s current and former police chiefs, is Black.
“One recognizes the influences of race, from the slave codes to Jim Crow, to lynching, to the war on crime, to the overincarceration of people of color: Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. And now Daniel Prude,” she said.
Lawyers for the seven police officers suspended over Prude’s death have said the officers were strictly following their training that night, employing a restraining technique known as “segmenting.” They claimed Prude’s use of PCP, which caused irrational behavior, was “the root cause” of his death.
Calls were made to the officers’ attorneys. Matthew Rich, who represents four officers, said “we’re still taking it in” and that the attorneys would speak to the press later.
Hundreds of protesters gathered Tuesday evening on the street where Prude was detained.
The March 23 video of Prude’s fatal encounter with officers was initially withheld by police in part because of concerns it would inflame street demonstrations occurring nationwide over George Floyd’s death.
Ultimately released Sept. 4, it showed officers placing a mesh bag over Prude’s head to stop him from spitting after they detained him for running naked through the streets. Prude had been evaluated at a hospital for odd behavior a day earlier, but he wasn’t admitted. His family called police because they were concerned about Prude’s safety after he bolted from the house.
One officer pushed Prude’s face against the ground, while another officer pressed a knee to his back. The officers held him down for about two minutes until he fell unconscious. He was taken off life support a week later.
“The system failed Daniel Prude again,” Prude family lawyer Elliot Shields said of the grand jury’s decision. ”It failed him on March 22 when he was released from the hospital. It failed him on the night of March 23 when the police used deadly force against him. And it failed him again today.”
Shields said Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, was “heartbroken.”
Officers Troy Taladay, Paul Ricotta, Francisco Santiago, Andrew Specksgoor, Josiah Harris and Mark Vaughn, along with Sgt. Michael Magri, were suspended after Prude’s death became public. The officers will remain on leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation, according to Rochester police chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan.
The Rochester police union said in a statement it would not immediately comment.
The grand jury decision isn’t likely to end scrutiny of the Rochester Police Department, which has been heavily criticized over the past year over numerous incidents involving allegations of excessive force.
James, a Democrat, said that in addition to meeting with Prude’s brother, she wanted to speak with a 9-year-old girl who was recently pepper sprayed by city police officers responding to a family dispute.
The department has also been criticized for rough treatment of protesters last summer.
The U.S. Justice Department planned to review the attorney general’s findings, according to a joint statement from its Civil Rights Division, the U.S. attorney in western New York and the FBI.
“I don’t think it’s over,” said Mike Johnson, a Rochester activist who joined the protest of the grand jury decision Tuesday evening. “I don’t think this grand jury decision is the last say in seeking justice for this issue.”
“This is just another slap in the face,” said Johnson, noting that Tuesday was the anniversary of the death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man who was chased and shot by armed men in Brunswick, Georgia, one year ago.
James said that for the sake of public transparency, she had asked a judge to unseal some records related to the grand jury proceeding.
HOUSTON – A giant vaccination center is opening in Houston to administer 126,000 coronavirus doses in the next three weeks. Nevada health officials are working overtime to distribute delayed shots. And Rhode Island is rescheduling appointments after a vaccine shipment failed to arrive as scheduled earlier in the week.
From coast to coast, states were scrambling Tuesday to catch up on vaccinations a week after winter storms battered a large swath of the U.S. and led to clinic closures, canceled appointments and shipment backlogs nationwide.
But limited supply of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines hampered the pace of vaccinations even before extreme weather delayed the delivery of about 6 million doses.
The White House promised on Tuesday that help is on the way.
States can expect about 14.5 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine this week, an almost 70% increase in distribution over the past month, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday. And White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients told governors on Tuesday that the number of doses sent directly to pharmacies will increase by about 100,000 this week, Psaki said.
The stepped-up efforts
come as the COVID-19 death toll in the U.S. surpassed 500,000, far more than any other country.
More than 44 million Americans have received at least one dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, and about 1.4 million per day received either a first or second dose over the past seven days, according to the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention.
Although average daily deaths and cases have been falling, some experts say not enough Americans have been inoculated for the vaccine to be the reason. The decline instead is attributed to the passing of the holidays, more people staying indoors during the winter and better adherence
to mask rules and social distancing.
What’s more, they warn that dangerous variants could cause the trend to reverse itself. States are responding by simultaneously trying to catch up from last week’s pause and gear up to vaccinate more people in coming weeks.
Houston’s federally funded vaccination site will
open Wednesday at NRG Park, operating seven days a week for three weeks to distribute 126,000 first doses, before transitioning to second doses, officials said.
Texans are recovering from a devastating winter storm that killed at least 35 people, left millions without power and water, and delayed vaccinations.
“It’s been trauma after trauma, and people deserve some good news, some hope,” said Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, the county’s chief elected official.
In Buda, Texas, retired teachers Donna and Gerald Haschke, both 74, were supposed to get their second doses last week but their appointments were canceled three times because of the storm. They’re scheduled to receive doses on Thursday.
The couple are eager to get completely vaccinated after months of having to scale back all their activities because of the coronavirus. Gerald Haschke has heart stents and Donna Haschke has atrial fibrillation, she said.
“My cardiologists said, ‘You do not want to get COVID,’” Donna Haschke said. “I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ To me that was a warning that I need to stay home.”
In Mississippi, where COVID-19 vaccinations plummeted last week amid freezing temperatures and icy roads, health officials were automatically rescheduling appointments, and planned to schedule more than normal through the weekend.
The state Department of Health said Monday that just 32,540 vaccinations were given in the state last week, down from 106,691 the previous week.
Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak said Monday that
His complaint was never officially accepted.
Police, however, filed a complaint on their own. It gave a different version of events and places Khan at least a kilometer (0.6 mile) from where he was shot, suggesting he was injured in the crossfire between the two clashing groups. It didn’t identify his attackers.
The stories of many other Muslim victims follow a similar pattern. Police and investigators have dismissed hundreds of complaints against Hindu rioters, citing a lack of evidence despite multiple eyewitness accounts.
They include a man who saw his brother fatally shot, a father of a 4-monthold baby who witnessed his home being torched and a young boy who lost both his arms after Hindu mobs threw a crude bomb at him.
Now, many make weekly trips to lawyer Mehmood Pracha’s office, hoping for justice. Very few have seen their attackers put behind bars. Many others are still waiting for their cases to be heard in court.
Pracha, a Muslim, is representing at least 100 riot victims for free. He said there were multiple instances in which police were provided videos of Hindu mobs, many with links to Modi’s party, “but it seems that police were eager to implicate Muslims” in the riots.
He said in many cases Muslims were also “threatened to withdraw their complaints.”
“The police have acted as partners in crime,” Pracha said.
Multiple videos of the riots seen by the AP show police egging on Hindu mobs to throw stones at Muslims, destroying surveillance cameras and beating a group of Muslim men – one of whom later died.
Multiple independent fact-finding missions and rights groups have documented the role of police in the riots.
In June 2020, Human Rights Watch said “police failed to respond adequately” during the riots and were at times “complicit” in attacks against Muslims. It said authorities “failed to conduct impartial and transparent investigations.”
On a recent night, Haroon, who goes by one name, said he was “still scared of going out in the evening.”
He saw his brother Maroof fatally shot by his Hindu neighbors during the riots. The police never identified the accused in his complaint despite multiple eyewitnesses.