Protests surged on Friday and Saturday in Rochester over the death of Daniel Prude. Saturday night was particularly bad as police deployed tear gas and pepper balls, and protesters hurled rocks, bottles, and fireworks.
Activists are now calling for Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren and Police Chief La’Ron Singletary to resign. However, in a press conference Sunday morning, Mayor Warren outlined how the city is working to initiate reforms within the police department.
According to the Democrat and Chronicle, Warren said she has recommitted herself to working to improve the city’s response to mental health crises. She said the city will double the availability of mental health professionals and work with the RASE commission to re-envision the police department and how it responds to mental health crises.
RASE is an acronym for the Commission on Racial and Structural Equity, the body created by Rochester and Monroe County to study the local impact of structural and institutional racism. The RASE Commission will be examining policing policies but will also look at education, health care, mental health and addiction services, job creation and business development as a prelude to developing policies and legislation to address racial inequities.
“We had a human being in a need of help, in need of compassion. In that moment, we had an opportunity to protect him, to keep him warm, to bring him to safety, to begin the process of healing him and lifting him up,” Warren said, per NBC News. “We have to own the fact that in the moment we did not do that.”
Mayor Warren also expressed her support for Singletary, saying she “wholeheartedly believes he is the right person” to lead the Rochester Police Department. “I do not believe there’s another person more dedicated to changing the culture of policing than La’Ron,” she said.
Police Chief Singletary also talked to reporters at the press conference, agreeing that there was a need for reform in the department. He said he is working with experts and clinicians to get outpatient services for those who struggle with mental health problems and are repeatedly in police contact.
“I understand that there are certain calls that law enforcement shouldn’t handle alone and we are looking at ways to reimagine policing surrounding mental health, and have been for the last several months,” he said.
Both Warren and Singletary are in an equally tenuous position. The Mayor is also the subject of an intensifying criminal investigation related to her campaign finance practices in her 2017 re-election campaign. Both of them have had the New York Civil Liberties Union on their backs, asking that they resign over the seeming inaction in Prude’s death.
Daniel Prude died March 30, after he was taken off life support, seven days after he was handcuffed by police and then, a “spit sock” was placed over his head.Prude asked that they remove it, but a video released Wednesday by the man’s family shows the officers allegedly slamming the man’s head into the pavement.
A medical examiner concluded that Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.”
