A federal civil rights lawsuit was filed Monday against city and police officials in Rochester, New York, alleging decades of “inhumane” racist police violence and against protesters and residents. The lawsuit comes more than a year after Daniel Prude died in police custody, which led to the national condemnation of the use of force by the police in the city.
“In a nutshell, an impressive historical record spanning more than four decades shows that Rochester Police Department’s force-using practices remain inhumane, racist, and antithetical to the functioning of a civilized society,” the lawsuit states. .
The lawsuit, filed by a group of lawyers, activists and people who attended the protests in the city, alleges that Rochester police routinely deploy excessive force against minorities, especially during protests, and that officials from the department and the city have left this conduct largely unpunished. The nearly 100-page document details more than 50 cases of alleged police abuses against people of color, for which the vast majority of officers were never formally disciplined.
As an example of the pattern of alleged conduct, the lawsuit focuses largely on the use of force against protesters, doctors, journalists and legal observers who took to the streets in September 2020 to protest Prude’s death.
Prude, a black man, died last March after suffering a mental health episode and his family called for help from police. At about 3:15 a.m. on March 23, Rochester police said they found Prude lying naked in the middle of the street.
As Prude obeyed his orders to lie on his stomach and be handcuffed, he sat down and began yelling at the officers, according to the interaction camera footage. Police then put a spit hood on his head and pressed his face to the ground for more than three minutes. Prude ended up not responding and later died in a hospital.
The coroner ruled her death a homicide, attributing it to “complications of asphyxiation in physical restraint,” as well as “excited delirium” and PCP poisoning. A great jury refused to charge the agents involved in Prude’s death in February.
Circumstances related to Prude’s death were not made public until September 2020, when Prude’s family posted images of the incident’s body camera at a press conference on September 2nd. The news provoked immediate outrage and the first protest came later that night.
During this protest and the demonstrations of the following weeks, the lawsuit alleges that Rochester police used “extreme and unnecessary force”, including tear gas, pepper spray, high-impact projectiles, pepper balls and other weapons. “less than lethal.” During the first three nights of protests, authorities deployed 77 tear gas canisters and 6,100 bullets of pepper, according to the lawsuit.
“To be blunt, what I have witnessed has been nothing less than abject terror, carnage and unwarranted brutalization,” Rochester photojournalist Reynaldo DeGuzman, who attended the protests, told a news conference announcing the lawsuit, according to CBS subsidiary WROC.
MARANIE R. STAAB / AFP via Getty Images
The lawsuit details dozens of cases of alleged police violence in the protests, including a Sept. 3 incident in which an officer allegedly shot a man in the eye with a pepper ball “near,” leaving him permanently blind. Officers are accused of “intentionally” firing at doctors who tried to provide help, even though doctors allegedly wore bright red jackets that identified who they were.
On Sept. 4, Rochester resembled “a war zone,” with officers “throwing instant grenades, tear gas and thousands of pepper balls at the crowd,” the lawsuit said.
That night, police allegedly caught a group of protesters on a bridge (a tactic commonly known as a “kettle”) before attacking them with various weapons. “Videos from that night show heavily armored police phalanxes using pepper balls, 40mm kinetic bullets, tear gas and batons to attack various groups of protesters equipped only with umbrellas, cardboard boxes and plastic children’s sledges against the ‘arsenal of military rank of the RPD’. says the demand.
“In New York City, for example, which saw thousands of protesters take to the streets, NYPD agents did not shoot a single pepper ball,” the lawsuit added. “By contrast, an RPD officer on the night of September 4, 2020 fired 148 peppercorns in just twenty minutes.”
Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency through Getty Images
The lawsuit also accuses city officials of running a “simulated internal disciplinary system” and refusing to hold officers accountable for using excessive force during protests or in their daily work.
Of the 923 civil complaints of excessive force between 2001 and 2016, the police chief maintained only 1.7%, according to the lawsuit. The strictest sentence administered in these 16 sustained cases “was 6 suspensions, most between 1 and 20 days.”
By failing to significantly train, supervise, and discipline officers who use excessive force and instead suppress evidence of misconduct by officers and attack critics of the department, the city has fostered a culture of violence and impunity in their ranks, “the lawsuit says.
In a statement to CBS News, the city said Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren “welcomes” a Justice Department investigation into the police department and cited recent reforms the city has implemented, including the need for new officers to live in the city and allow the mayor firefighters for cause.
The lawsuit designates defendants for city and Rochester police officers, as well as hundreds of police officers, and seeks economic damages and the appointment of an independent monitor for the police department, among other petitions.
“In the absence of external enforcement, the system will not change on its own: to date, the Department has not fired or disciplined any of the officers known to have exerted excessive force against Daniel Prude or any of the officers who staged demonstrations. flagrant lawsuits during the September 2020 protests, including those captured on video, “the lawsuit says, adding:” Plaintiffs are filing this lawsuit to end RPD’s use for decades of violent unconstitutional force; Lost “.
Neither the Rochester Police Department nor the union representing the officers responded immediately to CBS News’ request for comment.