Daniel Prude’s Death by Rochester Police Called a ‘Lynching’

By N. Jamiyla Chisholm Sep 03, 2020

New protests broke out in Rochester, N.Y., yesterday (September 2) as a result of another case involving police brutality that led to the death of 41-year-old Daniel Prude, a Black man, several media outlets, including NPR, report.

Prude’s brother Joseph held a press conference outside of Rochester City Hall yesterday, where he questioned the police’s actions, following the release of body cam videos from March which showed police placing a hood over his brother’s head and handcuffing him, face down on a below-freezing snowy day, when he was completely naked, NPR reports.

“How are you sitting here with your knee in my brother’s damn back, when he’s defenseless?” Joseph Prude demanded in the video, courtesy of Will Cleveland via Twitter. “He’s got on no damn clothes. Let’s keep it real. If you want to know the truth, the video footage is going to show the truth. And these people that’s steady trying to cover this up, let’s stop this.”

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The incident, which Joseph Prude called a lynching, began on March 23 after he called 911 for help with his brother who was having a mental health crisis. Instead of receiving help, Daniel Prude ultimately “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,” the Associated Press wrote in their report today. Prude died seven days after the police encounter on March 30, when he was taken off life support, the AP reports. The medical examiner even confirmed Prude’s cause of death as “homicide.” (See the complete autopsy report here.) 

“I placed the phone call for my brother to get help, not for my brother to get lynched,” Joseph Prude told Rochester First. “When I say get lynched, that was full-fledged, murder, cold-blooded—nothing other than cold-blooded murder. The man is defenseless, naked on the ground, cuffed up already. I mean come on, how many brothers got to die for society to understand that this needs to stop? You killed a defenseless Black man, a father’s son, a brother’s brother, a nephew’s uncle.”

Now, with the family and local residents calling for accountability, the city’s Mayor Lovely Warren (D-N.Y) and police chief La’Ron Singletary (both of whom are Black) announced September 2 that the New York State Attorney General’s office was investigating. In the video below, Singletary explains why the public just learned of Prude’s death.

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“Unfortunately it has taken some time and I sympathize with the family because I too when I saw the video, was very disturbed,” Warren reportedly said at a press conference. “In this particular instance, this is not within our control. It’s not within our control fairly, because the executive order outlines that this case has to be handled by the Attorney General’s office.”

Also unfortunate is that while the police who killed Prude still have jobs, the protestors who hit the streets to demand justice for him were arrested. As Prude’s highly upsetting video continues to make its rounds across social media, advocates are tweeting their anger and pushing his story out:

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