ROCHESTER, N.Y (NewsNation Now) — A new investigation into the official response to the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died after being restrained by New York police during a mental health episode last year, found that Rochester city officials knowingly kept critical details of the case secret and lied to the public about what they knew.
Prude, 41, died in March 2020, several days after police officers, who Prude’s brother had called for help for his mental health crisis, put a mesh spit hood over his head and pressed his naked body against the street until he stopped breathing. Prude had been visiting relatives from his home in Chicago.
The death went mostly unpublicized until nearly six months later when police body camera video was released following pressure from Prude’s family.
The report, commissioned by Rochester’s city council and made public Friday, said Mayor Lovely Warren lied at a September press conference when she said it wasn’t until August that she learned officers had physically restrained Prude during the March 23 arrest that led to his death.
Warren was told that very day that officers had used physical restraint, the report said, and by mid-April she, then-police Chief La’Ron Singletary, Corporation Counsel Timothy Curtin, and communications director Justin Roj were aware that Prude had died as a result and that the officers were under criminal investigation.
The report said the ultimate decision to not disclose the death of Prude to the public was that of Warren. However it went on to say the responsibility for the delay wasn’t just hers.
“In the final analysis, the decision not to publicly disclose these facts rested with Mayor Warren, as the elected Mayor of the City of Rochester,” said the report, written by New York City lawyer Andrew G. Celli Jr. “But Mayor Warren alone is not responsible for the suppression of the circumstances of the Prude Arrest and Mr. Prude’s death.”
Singletary disclosed that the officers restrained Prude, but “consistently deemphasized” the role of restraints in his death, nor did his statements to Warren and other officials “capture the disturbing tenor of the entire encounter,” the report said.
Singletary’s characterization “likely impacted” how city officials viewed the matter, the report said.
Warren claimed to the public that Singletary initially told her that Prude’s death was a “drug overdose,” but Friday’s report said he never told her that. Singletary, meanwhile, failed to correct Warren’s claim during a September news conference that she was never informed that Prude’s death had been ruled a homicide, the report said. Singletary told her of the finding on April 13, the report said, characterizing his response in September that “the Mayor just said she was not” informed as “untrue statements by omission.”
Additionally, the report said, a city lawyer in August discouraged Warren from publicly disclosing Prude’s arrest or commencing disciplinary action against the officers after she viewed body-worn camera footage of the encounter for the first time.
The lawyer incorrectly stated that the city was barred from taking action against the officers while the state attorney general’s office was investigating Prude’s death, the report said. The video shows, Prude handcuffed and naked with a spithood over his head as an officer pushes his face against the ground, while another officer presses a knee to his back. This went on for two minutes until Prude stopped breathing.
The report also confirms that Rochester police commanders urged city officials to hold off on publicly releasing the body camera footage of Prude’s suffocation death because they feared violent blowback if it came out during protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
But the report also said the delayed release of body camera footage was delayed by several factors, and not all because of the city’s response. FOIL requests and HIPAA release forms also contributed to the monthslong delay.
Lawyers for the seven police officers suspended over Prude’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 PCP, which caused irrational behavior, was “the root cause” of his death.
The autopsy report from the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death of Prude as a homicide, and noted the cause of death includes “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint due to excited delirium due to acute phencyclidine intoxication.”
A grand jury in February declined to bring criminal charges against the officers
Celli, in the report, noted that the decision to inform the public of a significant event “is a policy judgment, and a political one, not a legal one,” and that there are no written rules or standards in Rochester governing the mayor or other officials in such matters.
“It is not for the Special Council Investigator to pass judgment on whether the decisions by Rochester officials not to disclose the arrest and death of Daniel Prude were right or wrong,” Celli wrote. “The judges of that question are the citizens of the City of Rochester and the public at large.”
Five of Prude’s children filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Rochester Monday, alleging wrongful death and civil rights violations.
The family claims in the suit that both the actions of the Rochester police and an “attempted cover-up” by the department and city government violated Prude’s constitutional rights, attorneys for the family said in a statement.
Messages seeking comment were left with Warren’s spokesperson, who was among the officials scrutinized in the investigation, and a lawyer for Singletary.
You can read the full special report below:
NewsNation affiliate WROC and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
