“In the course of the investigation, the Office of the Attorney General concluded that there was sufficient evidence surrounding Mr. Prude’s death to warrant presenting the case to a grand jury,” the statement said.

“In an effort to provide maximum transparency into the case, Attorney General James is proactively releasing a comprehensive report with detailed descriptions of the events of March 22 and 23, 2020, legal analysis, all the evidence, findings, and recommendations that the office collected during the investigation outside of the grand jury process.”           

“Daniel Prude was in the throes of a mental health crisis and what he needed was compassion, care, and help from trained professionals. Tragically, he received none of those things,” said Attorney General James.

“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. While I know that the Prude family, the Rochester community, and communities across the country will rightfully be devastated and disappointed, we have to respect this decision. The current laws on the 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. I will be pursuing a multifaceted approach to address the very issues that have prevented us from holding officers accountable when they improperly use deadly force. I am committed to effecting the change that is so desperately needed, and I will be unshakeable in my efforts to see it through.”

On March 23, Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old African-American man, was killed after being physically restrained by Rochester, New York, police officers. Prude had been suffering from a mental health episode after ingesting PCP and was walking naked in the city's streets. The officers put a spit hood over his head after he began spitting. They held him face down on the pavement for two minutes and fifteen seconds, and he stopped breathing. Prude received CPR on the scene and later died of complications from asphyxia after being taken off life support.

The autopsy report ruled Prude's death a homicide and also included the contributing factors to his death as "excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP". The killing first received attention in September 2020 when the police body camera video and written reports were released along with the autopsy report.

Following the report's release, protesters demonstrated outside the Rochester police headquarters and many considered the death to be related to Prude's race. The demonstrations were connected to the Black Lives Matter movement and the string of racial justice events of 2020. (ILKHA)