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The mayor of New York’s third-largest city in the US suspended seven police officers involved in the suffocation death of a black man in March 2020 on Thursday (US time).
Daniel Prude, 41, known to his Chicago family as “Rell,” died on March 30 when his family took his life support off, seven days after agents who found him running naked down the street, put him on a hood on his head to stop him. He let it spit, then held it for about two minutes until he stopped breathing.
Ted Shaffrey / AP
Joe Prude, brother of Daniel Prude, right, and his son Armin, standing with a photo of Daniel Prude.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren announced the suspension of the officers at a news conference Thursday.
“Sir. Daniel Prude was failed by the police department, our mental health care system, our society, and I failed him,” Warren said.
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Warren said he only learned of the use of force on Aug. 4 and that Police Chief La’Ron Singletary initially described Prude’s death as a drug overdose, which is “completely different” from what he witnessed in the video. of the body camera. The mayor said she told the chief that she was “deeply, personally and professionally disappointed” by the fact that she did not accurately report what happened to Prude.
Warren said the seven officers would continue to be paid due to contract rules and that she was taking action against the advice of an attorney.
“I understand that the union can sue the city for this. They will feel free to do so, ”he said.
AP
In this image taken from police body camera video provided by Roth and Roth LLP, a Rochester police officer puts a hood over Daniel Prude’s head on March 23, 2020, in Rochester, New York.
Warren did not announce any action against Singletary. Police spokeswoman Jackie Shuman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Messages left with the union representing Rochester police officers were not immediately returned Thursday.
Prude’s death happened just as the coronavirus was out of control in New York and received no public attention at the time.
On Wednesday, Prude’s family held a press conference and released police body camera video obtained through a public records request that captured her fatal interaction with officers.
Prude had been taken to a Rochester hospital for a mental health evaluation about eight hours before the encounter that led to his death. He was returned to the care of his family and then suddenly he ran into the street and stripped off his clothes.
Prude had been traumatized by the deaths of her mother and a brother in recent years, having lost another brother before that, her aunt Letoria Moore said in an interview. In her final months, she had been back and forth between her Chicago home and her brother’s Rochester home because she wanted to be close to him, she said.
He knew his nephew had some psychological problems, he said. Still, when he called two days before his death, “he was the normal Rell that I knew,” Moore said.
“He didn’t know what the situation was, why he was going through what he was going through that night, but I know he didn’t deserve to be killed by the police,” he said.
AP
Daniel Prude died on March 30, 2020, after his life support was removed, seven days after the encounter with the police.
When officers found Prude, they handcuffed him, put a hood over his head because he had been spitting, and then pressed his face to the pavement for two minutes, police video shows.
The hoods are intended to protect officers from a detainee’s saliva and have been analyzed as a factor in the deaths of several prisoners in recent years.
The videos show Prude, her voice muffled by the hood, pleading with the white officer pushing her head down to let him go. As the officer, Mark Vaughn says, “Calm down” and “Stop spitting,” Prude’s screams turned into anguished groans and grunts.
“Okay, stop. I need it. I need it, ”he says.
The officer lets Prude go after about two minutes when she stops moving and falls silent. The officers then notice water coming out of Prude’s mouth and call the waiting doctors, who begin CPR.
A coroner concluded that Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of suffocation in the context of physical restraint.” The report lists excited delirium and acute phencyclidine poisoning, or PCP, as contributing factors.
Adrian Kraus / AP
A makeshift memorial is installed near the place where police officers detained Daniel Prude.
The New York attorney general’s office, Letitia James, took over the death investigation in April. It is ongoing.
Protesters demonstrated Wednesday at the Rochester police headquarters building and at the site where Prude died.
The activists are demanding that the officers involved be suspended and prosecuted on murder charges.
Associated Press writers Mary Esch, Michael R. Sisak, and Dave Collins contributed to this report.
