Mr. Prude, a father of five children, lived in Chicago, where he grew up in a public housing complex. He, too, was one of five children, two of whom died in tragic incidents that left Mr. Prude rattled.
As an adult, Mr. Prude worked in warehouses and factories on Chicago’s Southwest Side, and friends remembered him working to help find jobs for others in the neighborhood. He lived with his sister, Tameshay, and grew close to her teenage sons.
In September 2018, one of Mr. Prude’s nephews shot and killed himself in the home they shared. Mr. Prude’s friends said that after the nephew’s death, he increasingly used phencyclidine, or PCP, and his behavior became more erratic. Before he traveled to Rochester, his sister had kicked him out of her home, after a series of paranoid outbursts.
Mr. Prude arrived in Rochester the day before his death. His brother, Joe, picked him up from a shelter in nearby Buffalo after Mr. Prude had been kicked off a train from Chicago, Joe Prude told the police.
Soon after his arrival, Mr. Prude began behaving erratically, accusing his brother of wanting to kill him. Joe Prude had his brother taken to a hospital for an evaluation, but he was released within hours and returned to Joe Prude’s home.
Mr. Prude appeared to have calmed down. But hours after his return, he asked for a cigarette, and when his brother rose to get one, he bolted out a back door, dressed only in a tank top and long johns. Joe Prude called the police for assistance.
Officers found Mr. Prude naked in the street shortly after 3 a.m. [March 23, 2020] They ordered him to lie on his belly, and Officer Mark Vaughn handcuffed him without incident or resistance (Gold and Closson 2).
But police body-camera footage and written reports indicate that the officers did little to try to soothe Mr. Prude as he grew increasingly frantic after his arrest. The officers did not call for mental health professionals to respond to the scene. Nor did they offer him a blanket or put him in a police car for warmth, though he had stripped off his clothes and was naked.
The officers instead ordered him to lie on his stomach, and he complied, according to body camera footage and police reports. Pointing a Taser, one officer told Mr. Prude to “Chill out, man, don’t move, all right man?” before handcuffing him with relative ease at 3:16 a.m.
For three minutes, Mr. Prude made delusional comments as the officers stood around him. Then he sat upright and yelled, “Give me that mask, man!” and spat on the ground.
An officer responded by putting a so-called spit hood over Mr. Prude’s head from behind, which seemed to increase his panic (Sandoval 4).
Mr. Prude began rolling in the road, asking for the hood to be removed. Then, after shouting “give me the gun” to officers, he tried to stand again, the footage showed. Three officers pinned him to the ground, with Officer Vaughn holding his head to the pavement.
Mr. Prude pleaded to be let up, but he seemed to struggle to breathe, according to the footage. His words turned to gurgles, then stopped. After two minutes, Mr. Prude was no longer moving or speaking, and an officer asked, “You good, man?”
When paramedics arrived, Mr. Prude had no heartbeat, and they began CPR. He was revived and taken to a hospital.
Mr. Prude died on March 30 after he was removed from life support, seven days after he was detained.
The Monroe County medical examiner ruled Mr. Prude’s death a homicide that was caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” according to an autopsy report.
The report also said that “excited delirium” and acute intoxication by PCP were contributing factors in his death.
After Mr. Prude’s death, an unofficial police narrative took hold that Mr. Prude had suffered an overdose while in police custody. The Rochester Police Department offered no public comment in Mr. Prude’s death and for months treated it as an overdose.
…
Since the release of the footage in September, which was obtained through a public records request, Mr. Prude’s family has accused officials of covering up his death to protect the police officers involved.
Seven officers involved in the encounter with Mr. Prude were suspended on Sept. 3, the day after the release of the body camera footage and more than five months after Mr. Prude’s death. Two days after that, New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, set up a grand jury in the fall to consider evidence in Mr. Prude’s death (Gold and Closson 2-4).
Lawyers for the seven officers involved in Mr. Prude’s arrest said on Thursday that the officers knew Mr. Prude had taken phencyclidine, or PCP, and as a result they thought some techniques employed with mentally ill people would not work.
“Many in the media and elsewhere have cast this incident as a mental health event. It was not,” said Matthew Rich, a lawyer for four of the officers. “It was an event that involved the use of a dangerous drug with very serious side effects.”
Still, internal police documents show that from the moment that the officers responded to the 911 call on March 23, they knew that they were dealing with a so-called mental hygiene case involving a person who had not committed a serious crime but instead seemed to be experiencing a psychotic episode.
…
Training manuals in Rochester do not specify under what circumstances officers are allowed to use a spit hood, a loose breathable fabric sack that can be placed over a person’s head to prevent biting or spitting.
The city and county do have mental health professionals on call whom the Rochester police can summon in such situations, but it is not mandatory for officers to do so.
“They were not dispatched,” said Willie Lightfoot Jr., chairman of the City Council’s Public Safety Committee. “I don’t know why. I am looking for answers.”
The four lawyers representing the officers said they had followed their training precisely, using pinning techniques designed to avoid blocking airways and waiting for an ambulance as they had been taught to do in such cases. They added that mental health experts do not usually accompany officers on such calls.
The lawyers said that because their clients knew Mr. Prude was high on PCP, they relied on common physical maneuvers used to control people on drugs rather than softer methods like talking, which are often employed in mental hygiene calls.
The officers had also been taught that PCP can cause a body to overheat, so putting a blanket over Mr. Prude “would had done more harm than good,” said James Nobles, a lawyer for one of the officers.
The officers put a hood over Mr. Prude’s head to protect themselves from possible exposure to the coronavirus, but the hood’s mesh fabric should not have impeded Mr. Prude’s breathing.
“You can see through it, you can hear through it, you can breathe through it,” Mr. Nobles said, donning a so-called spit-sock at a news conference. “I can breathe better through this than I can through any mask that I’ve worn to prevent the coronavirus.”
The lawyers asked that the officers be reinstated. “We offer our sympathies to the family of Mr. Prude, but the officers involved in this incident did not cause his death,” Mr. Rich said.
Michael Mazzeo, president of the union representing about 700 Rochester officers, said that after viewing police footage of the arrest, he believed that the officers appear to have followed training protocols.
Mr. Mazzeo added that if training needs to change, “then change it. But don’t blame the officers.”
But Cedric Alexander, a former deputy police chief in Rochester, said the body camera footage demonstrated that the officers mishandled the arrest.
“Once they got him secured, and clearly he was having some crisis, they really should have gotten him off the ground, gotten him into that vehicle, and then taken him immediately into a mental health facility for evaluation,” Mr. Alexander said (Sandoval 5-6).
New York Attorney General Letitia James says a grand jury voted that no charges will be filed against Rochester police officers in connection with the March 2020 death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who was in the midst of a mental health crisis during his encounter with the police.
James initiated an investigation into the fatal encounter between police and Prude, who later died of asphyxiation, after his family uncovered video footage showing officers pinning him to the ground while he was in handcuffs and with a mesh hood over his head.
Police body camera footage of the arrest sparked outrage when it was published in September, prompting days of protests and accusations of a cover-up by city officials.
"We concluded that there was sufficient evidence surrounding Mr. Prude's death to warrant presenting the case to a grand jury, and we presented the most comprehensive case possible," James said in a statement announcing the decision — a culmination of a months-long investigation by the attorney general's office.
James said that the 41-year-old Prude was in the throes of a mental health crisis when police were called to the scene and that "what he needed was compassion, care, and help from trained professionals."
"Tragically, he received none of those things," she wrote.
James added: "The current laws on deadly force have created a system that utterly and abjectly failed Mr. Prude and so many others before him. Serious reform is needed, not only at the Rochester Police Department, but to our criminal justice system as a whole."
She urged the public to "respect this decision" despite feelings of injustice or disappointment (Treisman “New York” 1).
[March 5, 2020]
County Court Judge Karen Bailey Turner's order allowing the grand jury records to be unsealed is publicly released. In it, she notes the need for transparency with the case and says there is, as required by law, "compelling and particularized" reasons for taking the largely unprecedented step of unsealing grand jury records in New York (Craig and Sharp 3).
[The following information was revealed]
Prosecutors overseeing a grand jury investigation into the death of Daniel Prude last year in Rochester, New York, undercut the case for criminal charges with testimony from a medical expert who said three police officers who held Prude to the ground until he stopped breathing didn't do anything wrong.
Dr. Gary Vilke told the grand jury that Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, died of a heart attack caused by the medical phenomenon known as excited delirium. He said the officers' actions, which included placing a hood over Prude's head, had no impact on his breathing, according to transcripts of the proceedings made public Friday.
A medical examiner [had] ruled Prude's death a homicide due to asphyxiation from a physical restraint, with use of the drug PCP as a factor. There is no universally accepted definition of excited delirium and researchers have said it's not well understood.
Vilke, a University of California, San Diego professor who routinely testifies on behalf of police, said that restraining Prude during the encounter in the early hours of March 23, 2020, may have been best for his safety given his condition.
Asked by a grand juror if anything could have been done better, Vilke responded: "I wouldn't do anything differently."
The grand jury ultimately rejected criminally negligent homicide charges against the three officers by a 15-5 vote, the transcripts [revealed to the public ] show.
…
Vilke told the grand jury that drug use and mental illness contribute to excited delirium, which can make people vulnerable to cardiac arrest. He said he didn't think the spit hood was a factor or that the officers obstructed Prude's breathing.
"So, all those things allow me to be able to be comfortable saying my opinion is that none of the officers, their impact, individually or collectively, would have caused or contributed to that cardiac arrest," Vilke said. "And, to go even one step further, if he had been allowed to get up and run around ... that would actually be more detrimental than being held down."
…
At one point, prosecutor Michael Smith [did draw] … grand jurors' attention to a 2015 training bulletin that explained to officers that "positional asphyxia may occur when the position of the person's body interferes with respiration, resulting in serious injury or death" and that the risk of such asphyxia "can increase when the person is restrained in a prone position" (Prosecutor’s 1-2).
[March 8, 2021]
The children of Daniel Prude are suing the city of Rochester, N.Y. and at least six police officers in federal court, alleging civil rights violations, gross negligence and wrongful death. The 41-year-old Black man died of asphyxiation last March after being restrained by police while he was in the midst of a mental health crisis.
Attorneys representing Nathaniel McFarland, one of Prude's five children and the administrator of his estate, filed the lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
…
The filing comes nearly a year after Prude's death, and two weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James said a grand jury voted not to indict any of the officers involved.
Six Rochester police officers are named in the lawsuit: Mark Vaughn, Troy Taladay, Francisco Santiago, Michael Magri, Andrew Specksgoor and Josiah Harris. The defendants also include "other as-yet-unidentified Rochester police officers."
…
The lawsuit details how officers allegedly physically and verbally abused Prude instead of offering him much-needed assistance, for instance "chatting casually and making jokes at [his] expense" while he was lying on the ground, as well as laughing and repeating his words back to him "in a mocking way" as he "was rambling incoherently." It adds that the officers observing the abuse did not attempt to intervene.
The complaint also describes how, after pinning Prude down until he could no longer be heard gasping for air, officers were slow to notify the emergency medical technician on the scene and waited several minutes to uncuff his hands, rendering initial CPR efforts ineffective.
It describes the city's "broken" system for probing and disciplining incidents of excessive force, in which it says accused officers are investigated by fellow police officers and the police chief deemed "nearly every use of force incident ... justified, no matter how plainly egregious the conduct."
"As a result of the City's failure to meaningfully investigate or discipline officers who engage in excessive force, RPD officers can mete out force against citizens with impunity and take comfort in the fact their acts of violence will never be meaningfully scrutinized, even when those acts are captured on video," the complaint alleges.
Another section of the filing alleges that city policymakers did not implement appropriate training that would have prepared officers to "mitigate rather than aggravate the risk of harm" to Prude during his encounter with them.
Describing those policy failures as "deeply entrenched" the lawsuit notes that such incidents have continued even in the wake of the massive protests that followed the release of Prude's arrest footage last fall. At the end of January [2021], Rochester police officers handcuffed and pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old girl while responding to a family disturbance call.
More recently, as member station WXXI reported, an officer was placed on administrative leave after the department on Friday released body camera footage of a February incident in which a Black woman was pepper-sprayed while she was with her young child (Treisman “Daniel” 1, 3).
[Paste the following on Google to watch the 4 minute 44 second edited video of Prude’s encounter with Rochester police. There are longer versions of the encounter that include graphic language uttered by Prude that are quite crude – therefore, I offer this edited version]
Body cam video shows Rochester police arresting Daniel Prude
Works cited:
Craig, Gary and Sharp, Brian. “How Daniel Prude Died and What Happened Afterward? A Timeline of Events.” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, updated March 24, 2021. Net. https://www.democratandchronicle.com/story/news/2021/03/23/daniel-prude-death-timeline-rochester-ny-police-warren-singletary/4801182001/
Gold, Michael and Closson, Troy. “What We Know about Daniel Prude’s Case and Death.” The New York Times, April 16, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-happened-daniel-prude.html
“Prosecutor's Expert Told Grand Jury Police Did Not Kill Daniel Prude.” CBS News, April 17, 2021. Net. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/daniel-prude-death-rochester-new-york-grand-jury-cause-of-death/
Sandoval, Edgar. “Daniel Prude Was in ‘Mental Distress.’ Police Treated Him like a Suspect.” The New York Times, updated April 16, 2021. Net. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/09/nyregion/daniel-prude-rochester-police-mental-health.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
Treisman, Rachel. “Daniel Prude's Family Files Wrongful Death Lawsuit against Rochester Police Officers.” NPR, March 9, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/03/09/975304127/daniel-prudes-family-files-wrongful-death-lawsuit-against-rochester-police-offic
Treisman, Rachel. “New York Grand Jury Votes Not To Indict Rochester Officers in Daniel Prude Case.” NPR, February 23, 2021. Net. https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/970580501/new-york-grand-jury-votes-not-to-indict-rochester-officers-in-daniel-prude-case
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