Rochester, N.Y., police officers seen on body camera video last March holding down a naked and handcuffed Black man named Daniel Prude until he stopped breathing will not face criminal charges, according to a grand jury decision announced Tuesday.
Daniel Prude’s death in March 2020 sparked nightly protests in the city after the video was released nearly six months later, with demonstrators demanding a reckoning for police and city officials.
State Attorney General Letitia James, whose office took over the prosecution and impaneled a grand jury, said she was “extremely disappointed” and would meet with Prude’s brother, criminal justice advocates and faith leaders in Rochester to devise a plan to fight for a more just system.
“The criminal justice system has frustrated efforts to hold law enforcement officers accountable for the unjustified killing of African Americans. And what binds these cases is a tragic loss of life in circumstances in which the death could have been avoided,” James said at the Aenon Missionary Baptist Church in Rochester.
“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 colour: Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. And now Daniel Prude,” James later added.
WATCH | More questions raised about race and policing:
Months after a national reckoning on race and policing started in the U.S., the video of Daniel Prude’s fatal encounter with Rochester, N.Y., police raises fresh issues. 2:04
Lawyers for the seven police officers suspended over the 41-year-old’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 the drug PCP, which caused irrational behaviour, was “the root cause” of his death.
The video made public on Sept. 4, 2020, shows Prude handcuffed and naked with a spit hood over his head as an officer pushes his face against the ground, while another officer presses a knee to his back. The officers held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing. He was taken off life support a week later.
Ruled a homicide
The county medical examiner listed the manner of death as homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint” and cited PCP as a contributing factor.
Prude’s family filed a federal lawsuit alleging the police department sought to cover up the true nature of his death.
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.
WATCH | System failed Daniel Prude, mayor says:
Rochester, N.Y., Mayor Lovely Warren says Daniel Prude died ‘because of the action of our police officers.’ 1:11
Calls were made to the officers’ attorneys. Matthew Rich, who represents four of the officers, said “we’re still taking it in” and said the attorneys would speak to the press later.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren fired police chief La’Ron Singletary shortly after the video’s release, while rejecting calls from demonstrators that she resign.
Singletary has said in legal papers that Warren told him to lie to support her assertion that she hadn’t learned of Prude’s death until months later, and fired him for his refusal to do so. A city spokesperson said his version of events confirms Warren never saw the video until August.
Warren, a Democrat, announced a run for a third term in January and pleaded not guilty in October to an unrelated indictment alleging she broke campaign finance rules and committed fraud.
The city’s public integrity office found no ethical lapses by the mayor in a narrow review of Prude’s death.
The city halted its investigation into Prude’s death when the attorney general’s office began its own investigation in April. Under New York law, deaths of unarmed people in police custody are typically turned over to the attorney general’s office, rather than handled by local officials.
www.cbc.ca 2021-02-23 22:35:11