Rochester: Police suspended after death of Daniel Prude
September 4, 2020Seven police officers involved in the suffocation death of Daniel Prude in March in Rochester, New York, were suspended on Thursday by the city's mayor.
Prude, 41, was running down a street naked when police officers apprehended him. The officers put a hood over his head and pressed his head into the pavement for nearly two minutes — a reported effort to stop him spitting. He was then taken to hospital, and his family took him off life support seven days later, on March 30.
The incident received no public attention at the time.
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According to the Monroe County medical examiner, his death was a homicide caused by "complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.”
"Mr. Daniel Prude was failed by the police department, our mental health care system, our society and he was failed by me," said Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, the first Black woman to serve as a mayor of the city. "We cannot continue to fail Black lives in this way."
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At a press conference on Wednesday, Prude's family released body camera video footage that they obtained via a public records request. It detailed Prude's encounter with the police, just hours after he had been taken to a local hospital for a mental health evaluation. Soon after returning home, he ran into the street, taking off his clothes.
"I didn't know what was the situation, 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," said Letoria Moore, Prude's aunt.
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Rochester police chief La'Ron Singletary also acknowledged anger over the death. However, he maintained that there was no "cover-up" in delaying the release of the video.
Protesters gathered outside Rochester's police headquarters on Wednesday, demanding that the officers involved be prosecuted on murder charges. More protests are planned across the state.
Prude died nearly two months before the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, which sparked ongoing protests against racism and police brutality across the United States.
see/aw (AP, AFP, Reuters)