Former police chief La’Ron Singletary of Rochester, New York, accused the city’s mayor of pressuring him to lie about a series of subsequent events. the death of Daniel Prude and dismissing him after he refused. Prude, a black man, died in March after Rochester police put a spit on his head and pressed his face to the ground for more than three minutes while he was naked and handcuffed, according to body camera footage and documents submitted by his family.
The circumstances of Prude’s death were not made public until September, when the family posted body camera footage and evidence. The six-month delay raised questions about why his death was not previously disclosed to the public.
In a press conference the next day and in several subsequent interviews, Mayor Lovely Warren stated that Singletary told her that Prude died of a PCP overdose, said she had not seen video footage of her arrest until August, and went arguing that Singletary downplayed the circumstances of Prude’s death.
“I addressed Police Chief La’Ron Singletary with the deep disappointment I feel for him personally and professionally for not having fully and accurately informed me of what happened to Mr. Prude,” Warren said at the time. . Singletary announced his resignation days later, but weeks before he officially left, he was fired.
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But in her notice of complaint, a precursor to a lawsuit, Singletary claims she was fired because she refused to lie to City Hall to support Warren’s narrative that she had been uninformed about Prude’s death.
“On September 7, Mayor Warren asked me to withhold complete and truthful information from the City Council’s investigation into the Daniel Prude affair,” Singletary wrote. “Mayor Warren asked me, instead, to provide false information and to omit material information to support the mayor’s public narrative about her knowledge of the events in the Daniel Prude issue.”
Singletary said that during that Sept. 7 conversation she was asked to omit what she told Lovely in April that Prude’s death was considered a homicide and that she had previously told him that officers had detained Prude before to die.
Singletary further stated that when he announced his retirement on September 8, he sent “a clear indication to Mayor Warren that if I commented or stated publicly in the course of any investigation, including the investigation of the City Hall on the Daniel Prude affair, my true testimony would inevitably reveal the mayor’s false public narrative. ”
“For this reason and possibly for others, I allege and I think I was fired on September 14,” he added.
Singletary also claimed that Warren’s narrative about the months following Prude’s death has “damaged my reputation for honesty, integrity and veracity.”
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“The Mayor of the City of Rochester and others acting on behalf of the Mayor challenged my performance as Chief of Police of the City of Rochester by making false statements and material omissions about my performance and performance of my duties. on the treatment of Daniel Prude in the custody of Rochester Police, his subsequent death, the internal investigations conducted by the Rochester Police Department and my communication with Mayor Warren and other city officials. ” he said.
The city did not respond to CBS News’ request for comment.
The New York Attorney General is still investigating Prude’s death. A review by the city’s Public Integrity Office on Tuesday found that no city employee “violated city or departmental policies or ethical standards” in handling the case, according to CBS affiliate WROC -TV.