On Monday, a federal civil rights lawsuit was filed against city and police officers in Rochester, New York, over decades of “inhumane” and racist police brutality against protesters and residents. The lawsuit comes more than a year after Daniel Prude died in police custody, which led to a national condemnation of police use of force in the city.
Simply put, an astonishing historical record spanning more than four decades shows that the use of violence by the Rochester Police Department continues to be inhumane, racist and contrary to the functioning of a civilized society, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit, filed by a group of lawyers, activists and people attending protests in the city, alleges that Rochester police routinely use excessive force against minorities, especially during protests, and that the department and city officials have largely left such behavior unpunished. The nearly 100-page document describes more than 50 cases of alleged police abuse against people of color, for which the vast majority of officers were never formally punished.
As an example of the pattern of alleged behavior, the lawsuit focuses heavily on the use of violence against protesters, medics, journalists and legal observers who took to the streets in September 2020 to protest Prude’s death.
Prude, a black man, died last March after going through a mental illness and his family calling the police for help. At approximately 3:15 a.m. on March 23, Rochester police said they found Prude naked in the middle of the street.
While Prude obeyed their orders to lie down in his stomach and be handcuffed, he sat up and started yelling at officers, according to camera footage of the interaction. Police then put a spit hood over his head and pressed his face to the ground for more than three minutes. Prude eventually became unresponsive and later died in a hospital.
The medical examiner ruled his death a murder and attributed it to “complications of asphyxiation with physical limitations,” as well as “agitated delirium” and PCP intoxication. A grand jury refused to charge the agents involved in Prude’s death in February.
The circumstances surrounding Prude’s death did not become public until September 2020, when Prude’s family released camera footage of the incident at a press conference on September 2. The news caused immediate outrage and the first protest took place later that evening.
During that protest and the demonstrations in the weeks that followed, the lawsuit alleges that Rochester police used “extreme and unnecessary violence”, including tear gas, pepper spray, blunt projectiles, pepper balls and other “less than lethal” weapons. During the first three nights of protests, authorities deployed 77 tear gas canisters and 6,100 peppercorns, the lawsuit said.
“To be blunt, what I’ve seen was nothing short of bitter terror, carnage and baseless cruelty,” Rochester photojournalist Reynaldo DeGuzman, who attended the protests, said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit, according to CBS-affiliated WROC.
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The lawsuit describes dozens of cases of alleged police brutality during the protests, including a Sept. 3 incident in which an officer allegedly shot a man in the eye with a pepper ball from “close range”, leaving him permanently blind. Officers are accused of “deliberately” firing at medics who attempted to help – despite medics reportedly wearing bright red coats to identify who they were.
On September 4, Rochester looked like “a war zone,” with officers “dropping flash grenades, tear gas and thousands of pepper balls on the crowd,” the lawsuit said.
That night, police reportedly captured a group of protesters on a bridge – a tactic commonly known as ‘cauldron’ – before attacking them with a number of weapons. Videos from that evening show heavily armored police phalanxes using pepper balls, 40mm kinetic bullets, tear gas and clubs to attack various groups of protesters equipped only with umbrellas, cardboard boxes and plastic children’s sledges against the RPD military arsenal, says the lawsuit.
“In New York City, for example, where thousands of protesters took to the streets, NYPD agents didn’t shoot a single pepper ball,” the lawsuit added. “In contrast, on the night of September 4, 2020, an RPD officer fired 148 pepper balls in just 20 minutes.”
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The lawsuit also accuses city officials of running a “sham internal disciplinary system” and refusing to hold to account officers who used excessive force, either during the protests or in their day-to-day work.
Of the 923 allegations of excessive force between 2001 and 2016, the police chief supported only 1.7%, the lawsuit said. The most severe penalty imposed in those 16 persistent cases “were 6 suspensions, most ranging from 1 to 20 days.”
By failing to meaningfully train, supervise and discipline officials who use excessive force and instead suppress evidence of officer misconduct and offensive critics of the department, the city has a culture of violence and impunity in its wake. ranks advanced, “the lawsuit said.
In a statement to CBS News, the city said Rochester mayor Lovely Warren “ welcomes ” a Justice Department investigation into the police station and cited recent reforms the city has made, including demanding new officers in the city. and allow the mayor to fire officers.
The lawsuit cites the city of Rochester and police officers, as well as hundreds of police officers, as defendants, demanding financial compensation and the appointment of an independent police supervisor, among other requests.
Without outside enforcement, the system will not change itself: to date, the Department has not fired or punished any of the officers known to have used excessive force against Daniel Prude or any of the officers guilty of blatant displays of the past. protests of September 2020, including the protests captured on video, ” the lawsuit says, adding, “ Plaintiffs are bringing this lawsuit to end the decades-long use of violent, unconstitutional force by the RPD – before more lives, more black and brown lives, lost. ”
Neither the Rochester Police Department nor the union representing the agents immediately responded to CBS News’ request for comment.