SUFFOCATION IN CUSTODY
Handcuffed Black man dies a week after police put ‘spit hood’ on his head, kneel on his back
A Black man died of suffocation in Rochester, New York, after police officers who were taking him into custody put a hood over his head and then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released by his family and local activists.
Daniel Prude, 41, died on March 30, seven days after his encounter with the police, after being removed from life support, his family said.
His death occurred two months before the killing in police custody of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off protests across the United States. But it attracted widespread attention only when his family held a news conference Wednesday to highlight video footage of the encounter taken from body cameras that the police officers wore.
The New York state attorney general, Letitia James, and the Rochester police chief said they were investigating the death. Seven officers involved were suspended Thursday. Elsewhere in the U.S.:
• A police officer in the San Francisco Bay Area has been charged with voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a Black man in a Walmart store in April.
The charge was filed Wednesday in the April 18 killing of Steven Taylor, 33.
San Leandro Police Officer Jason Fletcher, 49, responded to a call about an alleged shoplifter inside the store who was holding a baseball bat. A 20year veteran, Fletcher did not wait for backup and instead tried to grab the bat from Taylor, then fired his Taser and his service weapon, all in less than 40 seconds, Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’malley said in a news release.
“Officer Fletcher’s actions, coupled with his failure to attempt other de-escalation options rendered his use of deadly force unreasonable,” O’malley said.
Taylor's family is encouraged by the decision, said a statement issued by their lawyer.
“Mr. Taylor was suffering a mental health crisis and did not represent a threat to officers or the general public before being Tased and shot to death,” the statement said. “Although this is an important first step in seeking justice, the family is eager to see Fletcher convicted and appropriately sentenced.”
• In a Los Angeles County investigation of the fatal shooting of a Black man, a grainy video shows him struggling with a deputy sheriff, but it doesn’t confirm whether he reached toward a dropped gun before being shot, as authorities contend.
Kizzee was riding a bicycle when deputies tried to stop him for an unspecified traffic violation, according to an account from the sheriff ’s office. Kizzee dropped the bike and ran before deputies caught up to him. The sheriff ’s office’s account said he punched a deputy in the face.
A 41-second video obtained by the Los Angeles Times shows a police SUV stop in a street, and a deputy gets out, runs around a parked car and appears to try to grab Kizzee as he walks down the sidewalk. They tussle, standing, and move down the street together for several seconds. Kizzee appears to throw a punch, although the view is too unclear to confirm whether he struck the deputy.
The video then shows Kizzee breaking free, stumbling and falling to the ground. A second deputy arrives. Within about 2 seconds, they repeatedly open fire.
Sheriff’s officials have said that a gun fell out when Kizzee dropped a jacket as he fell to the ground, and he “made a motion” for the gun — prompting the shooting.
On the video, a fence obstructs the view at that point.
In the Rochester incident, the brother of the man who died in custody called 911 on March 23 after Daniel Prude, who was visiting from Chicago, ran out of his home in an erratic state. Prude had been taken to a hospital the previous day after he apparently began experiencing mental health problems, police reports show.
Rochester police officers detained him. A truck driver also called 911 before officers arrived, according to internal police investigations of the case, to say that a man wearing no clothes was trying to break into a car and saying that he had the coronavirus.
The video, first reported by the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester, shows Prude, who has taken off his clothes, with his hands behind his back. He is standing on the pavement in handcuffs, shouting, before officers put a so-called spit hood on his head, apparently in an effort to prevent him from spitting on them. New York was in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic at the time.
After the hood is placed over Prude’s head, he becomes more agitated. At one point, he shouts, “Give me that gun. Give me that gun,” and three officers push him to the ground.
The video shows one officer placing both hands on Prude’s head and holding him against the pavement while another places a knee on his back while the hood remains on his head.
One officer repeatedly tells Prude to “stop spitting” and to “calm down.”
After two minutes, Prude is no longer moving or speaking, and the same officer can be heard asking, “You good, man?”
The officer then notices that Prude had thrown up water onto the street.
A paramedic is called over — about five minutes after the officers placed the hood on Prude’s head — to perform
CPR on him before he is put into an ambulance.
The Monroe County medical examiner ruled Prude’s death a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” according to an autopsy report.
“Excited delirium” and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or the drug PCP, were contributing factors, the report said.
The body camera video was provided to Elliot Dolby-shields, a lawyer for Prude’s family, on Aug. 20 through an open-records request, and it was released to the public Wednesday after he and relatives reviewed the footage.
At the news conference Wednesday, activists and members of Prude’s family said the officers involved should be fired and charged with homicide, the Democrat and Chronicle reported. Joe Prude called the death of his brother a “coldblooded murder.”
“How many more brothers got to die for society to understand that this needs to stop?” Joe Prude said.
In a separate news conference, Rochester’s police chief, La’ron D. Singletary, said he understood that people were angry about Prude’s death and frustrated about the lack of action in the matter, as well as about the delay in releasing the video.
“I know that there is a rhetoric that is out there that this is a cover-up,” Singletary said. “This is not a cover-up.”
Later Wednesday, more than 100 protesters gathered for hours in downtown Rochester outside a police station and marched to the street where Prude had been detained. The demonstration grew tense at times. Police officers, some of whom wore masks with Thin Blue Line flags, shot what appeared to be tear gas or pepper spray at protesters as they stood in a line across from them.
Law enforcement officers typically use spit hoods to protect against bloodborne pathogens when a detainee is biting or spitting. But incidents in recent years have raised concerns about the safety of the hoods. They were involved in several of the 70 deaths in law enforcement custody over the past decade where, The New York Times found, the people who died did so after saying, “I can’t breathe.”
The use of spit hoods has been cited in several lawsuits.