Use Against Blacks: Police Suspended After Suffocation Death

In the case of the dead black Daniel Prude, the police officers involved have been suspended from their duties. The Mayor of Rochester was shocked by the events and the information policy of the police.

In the case of Daniel Prude, a black man who died after his arrest, the seven police officers involved have been suspended from their duties. Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said at a news conference. “Daniel Prude has been let down by the police, our mental health system and our society, and I have let him down.”

Prude had died in March at the age of 41 after life support was suspended. The man, naked and obviously mentally confused, had been arrested in Rochester seven days earlier. The police put a spit on his head and pushed him to the ground. A coroner concluded that Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of suffocation due to physical limitations.” The report cited delirium and acute poisoning from the drug phencyclidine, also known as PCBs, as contributing factors.

Video footage increased public pressure

Prude’s family had released body camera video images and recordings on Wednesday. Before that, Prude’s death had received little public attention. Prude was from Chicago and visited his family in Rochester. Police arrived after Joe Prude called 911 and reported that his brother had left the house and was suffering from mental health problems.

After the publication, criticism emerged that the city was silent for months on Prude’s death. Mayor Warren said she was misled about the circumstances of the arrest. Police Chief La’Ron Singletary portrayed the death as the result of a drug overdose, which is “completely different” from what she saw on the body camera footage. Warren said he learned that violence had been used on August 4. She was “deeply disappointed personally and professionally” by the fact that the chief of police did not inform her in detail about what happened.