Video in Black man’s suffocation shows cops put hood on him
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 Wednesday by the man’s family.
Daniel
Prude died 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 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,” Prude’s
brother, Joe Prude, said at a news conference. “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?”
The videos show
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!” Prude says, his voice becoming muffled and anguished under the hood.
“OK, stop. I need it. I need it,” the prone man begs before his shouts turn to whimpers and grunts.
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.”
His head had been held down by an officer for just over two minutes, the video shows.
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 U.S. 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. He was kicked
off the train before it got to Rochester, in Depew, “due to his unruly
behavior,” according to an internal affairs investigator’s report.
Rochester
police officers took Prude into custody for a mental health evaluation
around 7 p.m. 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 a.m. 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 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,” Rochester Mayor
Lovely Warren said at a press briefing. “We are precluded from getting
involved in it until that agency has completed their investigation.”
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.
Calls to the union representing Rochester police officers, and to the organization’s attorney, rang unanswered Wednesday.
Protesters
gathered Wednesday outside Rochester’s Public Safety Building, which
serves as police headquarters. Free the People ROC said several of its
organizers 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.
Demonstrators later gathered at the spot where Prude died, chanting, dancing and praying. They stayed late into the night.
The fatal encounter happened two months before the death of George Floyd in Minnesota prompted nationwide demonstrations. Floyd died when an officer put his knee on his neck for several minutes during an arrest.
Hill reported from Albany. Associated Press writers Mary Esch, Michael R. Sisak, Jennifer Peltz and Dave Collins contributed to this report.
The Associated Press quoted a woman who identified herself as an aunt of Prude. The AP has removed quotes and information attributed to her from stories because it can no longer verify her identity.
