ROCHESTER: A Black man who had run naked through the streets of a western New York city died of asphyxiation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released on Wednesday by the man's family.
Daniel Prude died on March 30 after he was taken off life support, seven days after the encounter with police in Rochester. His death received no public attention until on Wednesday, when his family held a news conference and released police body camera video and written reports they obtained through a public records request.
"I placed a phone call for my brother to get help. Not for my brother to get lynched. How did you see him and not directly say, 'The man is defenseless, buck naked on the ground. He's cuffed up already. Come on.' How many more brothers gotta die for society to understand that this needs to stop?," Prude's brother, Joe Prude, said at a news conference.
The videos show that Prude, who had taken off his clothes, complying when police ask him to get on the ground and put his hands behind his back. Prude is agitated and shouting as he sits on the pavement in handcuffs for a few moments as a light snow falls.
"Give me your gun, I need it," he shouts. Then, they put a white "spit hood" over his head, a device intended to protect officers from a detainee's saliva. At the time, New York was in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
Prude demands they remove it. Then the officers slam Prude's head into the street. One officer, who is white, holds his head down against the pavement with both hands, saying "calm down" and "stop spitting".
Another officer places a knee on his back. "Trying to kill me! OK, stop. I need it. I need it," Prude says, his voice becoming muffled and anguished under the hood.
The officers appear to become concerned after he stops moving, falls silent and they notice water coming out of Prude's mouth. "My man. You puking?" one says. One officer notes that he's been out, naked, in the street for some time. Another remarks, "He feels pretty cold."
The video shows that his head had been held down by an officer for just over two minutes. The officers then remove the hood and his handcuffs and medics can then be seen performing CPR before he's loaded into an ambulance.
Spit hoods have been scrutinized as a factor in the deaths of several prisoners in the US and other countries in recent years. A medical examiner concluded that Prude's death was a homicide caused by "complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint".
The report lists excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, as contributing factors. Prude was from Chicago and had just arrived in Rochester for a visit with his brother. According to an internal affairs investigator's report, he was kicked off the train before it got to Rochester, in Depew, "due to his unruly behavior".
Rochester police officers took Prude into custody for a mental health evaluation around 7 pm on March 22 for suicidal thoughts -- about eight hours before the encounter that led to his death. But his brother said he was only at the hospital for a few hours, according to the reports.
Police responded again after Joe Prude called 911 at about 3 am to report that his brother had left his house. The city halted its investigation into Prude's death when state Attorney General Letitia James' office began its own investigation in April.
Under New York law, deaths of unarmed people in police custody are often turned over to the attorney general's office, rather than handled by local officials.
James said on Wednesday that investigation is continuing. "I want everyone to understand that at no point in time did we feel that this was something that we wanted not to disclose. We are precluded from getting involved in it until that agency has completed their investigation," Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said at a press briefing.
One officer wrote that they put the hood on Prude because he was spitting continuously in the direction of officers and they were concerned about coronavirus.
Activists demanded that officers involved be prosecuted on murder charges and that they be removed from the department while the investigation proceeds. "The police have shown us over and over again that they are not equipped to handle individuals with mental health concerns. These officers are trained to kill, and not to deescalate. These officers are trained to ridicule, instead of supporting Mr. Daniel Prude," Ashley Gantt of Free the People ROC said at the news conference with Prude's family.
Protesters gathered on Wednesday outside Rochester's Public Safety Building, which serves as police headquarters. Demonstrators remained as night fell. Free the People ROC said several of its organisers were briefly taken into custody after they entered the building while Warren was speaking to the media.
They were released on appearance tickets, said Iman Abid, regional director of the NYCLU, who was among those taken into custody.
Prude, known to his big Chicago-based family by the nickname "Rell", was a father of five adult children and had been working at a warehouse within the last year, said his aunt Letoria Moore. "He was just a bright, loving person, just family-oriented, always there for us when we needed him," she said, and "never hurt or harmed anybody".