⁍ Rochester, New York, Mayor Lovely Warren on Monday fired Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and suspended two city officials over the handling of the asphyxiation death of Daniel Prude in police custody.

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⁍ Video footage, released by Prude’s family, showed officers using a mesh hood and pinning the 41-year-old Black man to the pavement during the March arrest.

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⁍ Singletary resigned last Tuesday along with his command staff, saying there had been a ‘mischaracterization and politicization’ of his actions following the death of Prude in police custody.

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– The mayor of Rochester, New York, has fired the city’s police chief and suspended two city officials over the death of a black man in police custody, Reuters reports. Daniel Prude, 41, died in March after officers pinned him to the pavement using a mesh hood. A medical examiner ruled his death a homicide by asphyxiation, with the drug PCP a contributing factor. Video footage released by Prude’s family showed officers using a mesh hood and pinning the 41-year-old Black man to the pavement during the March arrest. The footage has raised questions of a possible cover-up and turned Rochester into the latest flashpoint in a summer of protests over racial injustice and policing first sparked by George Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis police custody. “We have a pervasive problem in the Rochester Police Department, one that views everything through the eyes of the badge and not the citizens that we serve,” said Mayor Lovely Warren. “It shows that Mr. Prude’s death was not taken as seriously as it should have been. Never again can we allow any man or woman to needlessly die in police custody nor can we treat the review of a case as carelessly as we have done with this case.”