Hundreds of protesters took to the streets of Rochester, NY on Tuesday evening to protest the news that a grand jury had decided not to indict seven officers involved in the March 2020 arrest of Daniel Prude, whose death made headlines after the video showed he was handcuffed naked. and sitting on the street with his head covered with a spit hood.
Protesters gathered at about 7:30 p.m. in the area where Prude, a 41-year-old black man, was confronted and handcuffed by police just a year earlier, the Democrat & Chronicle reported. As the night progressed, protesters reportedly sang and braved avoid police orders the area of Child and Maple streets, where a police station is located.
Photos posted on social media show protesters – some wearing helmets and umbrellas – climbed the barriers along Child Street and were greeted by officers.
As the rally continued, police announced in a second tweet of the evening that RPD “supports the rights of our citizens to protest peacefully as the US Constitution allows.”
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The tweet added, “We ask that anyone who wishes to protest peacefully, refrain from participating in or being involved with anyone who is acting or committing acts of violence.”
Protesters reportedly walked ahead, walked into traffic along Interstate 490, and made their way to the Rochester Public Safety Building, where protesters often gathered – sometimes wearing scarce clothing to mimic the circumstances of Prude’s arrest – during the summer months to in the fall.
Protesters started jumping over metal barricades in front of the building and helping each other climb to the front doors.
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The unrest caught on around 11:45 p.m., the report says. The protesters were largely non-violent, and police made no arrests during the night, the Democrat & Chronicle said.
Earlier Tuesday, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the news that a grand jury declined to indict the six officers and a sergeant for their handling of the case last March.
Prude died just days after meeting the officers, and police reportedly described his death as a drug overdose. But police camera video that came to light in September showed that Prude appeared to be suffering from a mental episode, possibly caused by drugs.
The images further showed Prude naked and sitting on the street with a mesh cover, known as a spit cap, over his head. In the course of the interaction, one officer can be seen pressing his knee against Prude’s back, while another pushes his face toward the sidewalk. They reportedly held him for about two minutes, but later realized he had no pulse and started CPR.
He died on March 30. A medical examiner concluded that Daniel Prude’s death was a murder caused by “complications of suffocation in the setting of physical coercion.” The report cites excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, as contributing factors.
James, whose office took over the investigation, said her office had “made the strongest case possible” to the grand jury, but was unable to convince her that the officers had committed a crime.
“I know the Prude family, the Rochester community and the communities across the country will be rightly disappointed by this outcome,” said James, who traveled to Rochester to announce the grand jury’s decision at a church in the United States. near where Prude was fatally injured.
She said she had to respect the grand jury’s decision, but she also condemned a system that she said had “frustrated attempts to hold law enforcement accountable for the unjustified murder of African Americans.”
“What ties these cases together is a tragic loss of life in circumstances where death could have been avoided,” said James, who, like the mayor of Rochester and the city’s current and former police chiefs, is Black.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James addresses the media at Aenon Missionary Baptist Church in Rochester, NY, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2021. (AP Photo / Adrian Kraus)
“The influences of race can be recognized, from the slave codes to Jim Crow, to lynching, to the war on crime, to the over-imprisonment of people of color: Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd. And now Daniel Prude,” she said.
Lawyers for the seven police officers suspended for Prude’s death have said the officers strictly followed their training that night, using an inhibitory technique known as “segmentation.” They claimed that Prude’s use of PCP, which caused irrational behavior, was “the root cause” of his death.
Officers Troy Taladay, Paul Ricotta, Francisco Santiago, Andrew Specksgoor, Josiah Harris and Mark Vaughn, along with Sgt. Michael Magri, were expelled after Prude’s death went public. The agents are on leave pending the outcome of an internal investigation, Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan told The Associated Press.
FILE – This September 3, 2020, file photo, features Joe Prude, brother of Daniel Prude, right, and his son Armin, with a photo of Daniel Prude in Rochester, NY (AP Photo / Ted Shaffre, File)
(AP)
“The system failed Daniel Prude again,” family law attorney Elliot Shields said of the grand jury’s decision. “It failed him on March 22 when he was released from the hospital. It failed him on the night of March 23 when the police used deadly force against him. And it failed him again today.”
Shields said Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, was “heartbroken.”
Prude was from Chicago and traveled to Rochester on March 22 to visit his brother. According to a previously released report by an internal investigator, Prude was kicked off the train before it arrived in Rochester for “his unruly behavior.”
Hours later, he was taken to hospital before going to his brother’s house. On March 23 at around 3 a.m., he ran out of his brother’s back door.
Prude was handcuffed by police around 3:20 a.m. after his brother called the police to return him to the hospital, where he had been hours earlier.
“At around 3am, Daniel was acting very strangely again – he ran out my back door wearing only a tank top and a pair of long johns,” Joe Prude wrote in a supporting statement later released in the wealth of documents. “I called the police again so they could find him and take him back to the hospital.”
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Police found Daniel Prude shortly after he went to a phone shop where police believe he “threw a cinder block through the shop window before being spotted by a tow truck driver.” Police said the tow truck driver described Prude as naked, covered in blood, and said he had told the driver he had the new coronavirus.
What happened next – the video that sent shockwaves through New York State and the nation – also tapped into unrest between former Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and Mayor Lovely Warren.
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Singletary, who was fired over the department’s response to Daniel Prude’s death, said in December that Warren urged him to lie about her handling of the investigation – claiming he was impeached when he refused to do so.
That same month, the city’s Public Integrity Office released a report concluding that it found no ethical flaws in the way Warren or senior staff responded to Prude’s death.
Rochester has also recently come under fire after a video circulated showing local agents pepper spraying a 9-year-old girl.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.