A Black man who ran naked through the streets of a western New York city died of suffocation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes.
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 his family held a news conference and released police body camera video and written reports they obtained through a public records request.
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.
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. Another officer places a knee on his back.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.
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