{"id":67869,"date":"2020-09-16T04:43:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-16T01:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/police-leaders-pressed-rochester-to-keep-daniel-prude-video-secret\/"},"modified":"2020-09-17T21:04:58","modified_gmt":"2020-09-17T18:04:58","slug":"police-leaders-pressed-rochester-to-keep-daniel-prude-video-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/police-leaders-pressed-rochester-to-keep-daniel-prude-video-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"#Police leaders pressed Rochester to keep Daniel Prude video secret"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;<strong>#Police leaders pressed Rochester to keep Daniel Prude video secret<\/strong>&#8221;<\/p>\n<div>\n                        Rochester police commanders urged city officials to hold off on publicly releasing body camera footage of Daniel Prude\u2019s suffocation death because they feared violent blowback if the video came out during nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd, newly released emails show.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Chief Mark Simmons cited the \u201ccurrent climate\u201d in the city and the nation in a June 4 email advising then-Chief La\u2019ron Singletary to press the city\u2019s lawyers to deny a Prude family lawyer\u2019s public records request for the footage of the March 23 encounter that led to his death.<\/p>\n<p>The video, finally made public by Prude\u2019s family on Sept. 4, shows Prude handcuffed and naked with a spit hood over his head as an officer pushes his face against the ground, while another officer presses a knee to his back. The officers held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing. He was taken off life support a week later.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe certainly do not want people to misinterpret the officers\u2019 actions and conflate this incident with any recent killings of unarmed black men by law enforcement nationally,\u201d Simmons wrote. \u201cThat would simply be a false narrative, and could create animosity and potentially violent blow back in this community as a result.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Western New York city released the emails, police reports and other documents on Monday as Mayor Lovely Warren fired Singletary and suspended Corporation Counsel Tim Curtin and Communications Director Justin Roj without pay for 30 days amid continuing fallout from Prude\u2019s death. Simmons was named interim chief of the police department.<\/p>\n<p>Simmons\u2019 email seeking to have the city deny the Freedom of Information Law request echoed emails from other police officials worried about releasing video of the March 23 encounter as demonstrators were taking to the streets of Rochester and elsewhere to protest Floyd\u2019s May 25 death in Minneapolis and other police killings of Black people.<\/p>\n<p>Lt. Mike Perkowski told a city lawyer on June 4 that he was \u201cvery concerned about releasing this prematurely in light of what is going on\u201d and Capt. Frank Umbrino told another police official \u201cany release of information should be in conjunction with and coordinated with the Mayor and the Chief as it very well have some intense ramifications.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Simmons forwarded both emails to Singletary with his message advising the chief to have the Prude family lawyer\u2019s public records request squashed, according to the documents released Monday. Simmons suggested that the city deny the request because the case was still under investigation by the state attorney <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/general\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"3\" title=\"General\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">general<\/a>\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI totally agree,\u201d Singletary replied, according to the emails.<\/p>\n<p>Later on June 4, as discussion of the records request continued, city lawyer Stephanie Prince told Curtin of a way to buy more time: allowing the attorney general\u2019s office to show the family the video, as it has done in other cases, but not give them a copy of it.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis way, the City is not releasing anything pertaining to the case for at least a month (more like 2), and it will not be publicly available,\u201d Prince wrote.<\/p>\n<p>Warren maintains that she did not see the body camera footage until city lawyers played it for her on Aug. 4 and that Singletary initially misled her about the circumstances of Prude\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p>After seeing the video, Warren emailed Singletary that she was \u201coutraged\u201d at the conduct of the officer who pressed Prude\u2019s head against the ground, Mark Vaughn, and that he should face an im<a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/social-mediaa\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"1\" title=\"Social Media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">media<\/a>te disciplinary investigation.<\/p>\n<p>In an unsent draft of that email, Warren excoriated Singletary for having \u201cgrossly underplayed\u201d Prude\u2019s death by first describing it to her a drug overdose. In the draft, prepared with Deputy Mayor James Smith\u2019s help, Warren said she strongly believed Vaughn should be fired and that she would have asked for Vaughn\u2019s termination in March, had she seen the footage then. She suspended Vaughn and six other officers last week.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cQuite frankly, I would have expected the Chief of Police to have shown me this video in March,\u201d Warren wrote in the draft. The toned down version sent to Singletary did not include that criticism.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI should have known. Everyone is right. I should have known,\u201d Warren told WHEC-TV on Tuesday. \u201cBut this incident \u2014 an unfortunate and tragic situation \u2014 had been downplayed from the very beginning as a PCP overdose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A cursory management review that Smith conducted on the city\u2019s handling of Prude\u2019s death found that stalling the release of the body camera video because of concerns about optics cost did \u201cconsiderable damage\u201d to work the city has done to improve relations between the police and the public.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is hard to rationalize how anyone who saw the video of Mr. Prude\u2019s encounter with the RPD did not fully equate these events beyond a few mentions of bad publicity, politics, process or a \u2018false narrative,\u2019 \u201d Smith wrote. \u201cRochester is in desperate need of healing. We lost almost six months of opportunity to begin that process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The City Council voted Tuesday night to repeal its decision to build a new $16 million police station, WHEC-TV reported.<\/p>\n<p>Singletary announced his retirement last week as part of a major shakeup of the city\u2019s police leadership but had planned to stay on through the end of the month. In announcing his retirement Sept. 8, the outgoing chief accused critics of trying to \u201cdestroy my character and integrity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Prude\u2019s death has sparked nearly two weeks of nightly protests and calls for Warren\u2019s resignation. His family has filed a federal lawsuit alleging the police department sought to cover up the true nature of Prude\u2019s death.\n            <\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>if you want to <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/watch-movies-tv-seriess\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"8\" title=\"Watch Movies &amp; TV Series\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">watch Movies<\/a> or Tv Shows go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/dizi.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dizi.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a> <\/span> for forums sites go to <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/forum.buradabiliyorum.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Forum.BuradaBiliyorum.Com<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong>If you want to read more <a href=\"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/category\/news\/\" data-internallinksmanager029f6b8e52c=\"2\" title=\"News\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">News<\/a> articles, you can visit our <span style=\"color: #ff9900;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/general\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">General category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: black;\"><a style=\"color: #ff9900;\" href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/09\/15\/police-leaders-pressed-rochester-to-keep-prude-video-secret\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;#Police leaders pressed Rochester to keep Daniel Prude video secret&#8221; Rochester police commanders urged city officials to hold off on publicly releasing body camera footage of Daniel Prude\u2019s suffocation death because they feared violent blowback if the video came out during nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd, newly released emails show. Deputy&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":67870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,70897],"tags":[70070],"class_list":["post-67869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-news","tag-police-leaders-pressed-rochester-to-keep-daniel-prude-video-secret"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}