The post Daniel Gade attacks Mark Warner in first debate as flip-flopper appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>RICHMOND, Va. – Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia and his Republican opponent Daniel Gade sparred over the dangers of the conoravirus, when to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court other topics Wednesday during their first debate in a little-noticed Senate race.
Warner, a Democrat and former governor, is a the heavy favorite to win re-election for a third Senate term despite the fact that he almost lost six years ago. Virginia has tilted heavily Democratic since then, thanks to the large population growth in urban and suburban areas and President Donald Trump’s unpopularity in the state.
The race has been overshadowed by the presidential contest and more competitive races in other states that will determine partisan control of the Senate.
At Wednesday’s debate, held virtually due to the coronavirus pandemic, Gade tried to gain ground by attacking Warner as a career politician who flip-flops on key issues.
“The same old stale ideas aren’t working for Virginians,” Gale said.
Warner pitched himself as a business and tech-savvy moderate who is well-known to Virginians. He dismissed Gade’s attacks as theatre.
“President Trump has been shown by the Washington Post to have committed over 20,000 lies in his tenure. It appears my opponent is actually trying to catch up with him today,” Warner said.
Gade is a professor and a retired Army officer who was seriously injured in Iraq in 2005, losing a leg after his Humvee was hit by a roadside bomb. He advised President George W. Bush on military and disability issues and was Trump’s appointee to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but withdrew his nomination after a lengthy delay in the Senate over his confirmation.
Gade grew particularly animated when discussing the Affordable Care Act, saying the Warner campaign had wrongly accused Gade of not supporting a requirement that health insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions.
“I have a pre-existing condition myself because I got my leg blown off in Iraq … that’s not who I am, it’s a lie,” Gade said.
The pair sparred over whether the Senate should fill a Supreme Court vacancy after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last week. Warner said the spot should not be filled until after the election, noting that early voting as already started in Virginia.
Gade said the Senate should move ahead and said the court needs nine members in the “unlikely but dangerous” event of a contested election.
Warner criticized Gade for not wearing masks at some campaign events and downplaying the virus’ seriousness. Gade said he wears masks where appropriate, but noted that Virginians will be dealing with the virus for a long time.
“What we can’t do is give into fear,” Gade said.
Wednesday’s debate was the first of three planned before Election Day in November. It was sponsored by the Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce, George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government and NBC Washington.
Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC.
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]]>The post Daniel Prude video withheld by Rochester police, documents show appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Police officials in Rochester “downplayed” the police department’s March interaction with Daniel Prude and, over the course of months, went back and forth about their handling of the case out of apparent fear of backlash, according to recently released documents and the city’s mayor.
“This incident — an unfortunate and tragic situation — had been downplayed from the very beginning as a PCP overdose,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren told WHEC-TV on Tuesday, one day after her office announced the firing of Police Chief La’ron Singletary and the suspension of Corporation Counsel Tim Curtin and Communications Director Justin Roj. She named Deputy Chief Mark Simmons interim chief of the department.
On Monday, Warren’s office released 325 pages of documents pertaining to the March 2020 death of 41-year-old Prude. The trove was released at the same time as Warren’s announcement regarding the shakeup.
Lt. Mike Perkowski told a city lawyer on June 4 that he was “very concerned about releasing this prematurely in light of what is going on” and Capt. Frank Umbrino told another police official “any release of information should be in conjunction with and coordinated with the mayor and the chief as it very well have [sic] some intense ramifications.”
Simmons forwarded both emails to Singletary with his message advising the chief to have the Prude family lawyer’s public records request squashed, according to the documents released Monday. Simmons suggested that the city deny the request because the case was still under investigation by the state attorney general’s office.
Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary, right, seen before a community meeting in Rochester, N.Y., Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Adrian Kraus)
Singletary responded: “I totally agree.”
Later, on June 4, as the discussion of the records request continued, city lawyer Stephanie Prince told Curtin that a way to buy more time was to allow the attorney general’s office to show the video to Prude’s family, as it has done in other cases, but not give them a copy of it.
“This way, the city is not releasing anything pertaining to the case for at least a month (more like 2), and it will not be publicly available,” Prince wrote.
The video was ultimately released to Prude’s family, who made it public at the beginning of September.
Daniel Prude was handcuffed by police around 3:20 a.m. on March 23, after his brother called police to take him back to the hospital, where he had been hours earlier.
“At around 3 a.m. Daniel was acting very strange again – he ran out my back door wearing only a tank top and some long johns,” Joe Prude wrote in a supporting deposition later released in the trove of documents. “I called the police again so they could find him and take him back to the hospital.”
Footage shows Prude naked and sitting in the street wearing a mesh covering, known as a spit hood, over his head. Over the course of the interaction, one officer can be seen pressing his knee to Prude’s back while another pushes his face to the pavement. They allegedly held Prude down for approximately 2 minutes, but they later realized he didn’t have a pulse and began CPR.
He was taken off life support on March 30.
ROCHESTER PROTESTERS PAINT ‘MURDERERS’, ‘RESIGN’ ON STREET DURING DANIEL PRUDE DEMONSTRATIONS
A medical examiner concluded that Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.” The report lists excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP, as contributing factors.
Prude was from Chicago and traveled to Rochester on March 22 to visit his brother. According to a previously released internal affairs investigator’s report, Prude was kicked off the train before it arrived in Rochester for “his unruly behavior.”
Hours later, Prude was taken to the hospital before going to his brother’s home. Around 3 a.m. on March 23, he ran out of his brother’s back door.
Police met up with him soon after making his way to a phone store where he possibly “threw a cinder block through the store window before being spotted by a tow truck driver.” Police said the tow truck driver described Prude as being naked, covered in blood, and said he had told the driver he had the coronavirus.
FILE – In this undated file photo provided by Roth and Roth LLP, shows Daniel Prude. Prude, 41, suffocated after police in Rochester, N.Y., put a “spit hood” over his head while being taken into custody, according to the medical examiner. (Courtesy Roth and Roth LLP via AP, File)
The body camera footage shows that after Prude was handcuffed and lying on the ground, he could be heard shrieking and yelling for several minutes before he began to go silent. Police could be heard commenting that he appeared to have vomited water. They then realized he appeared to have stopped breathing.
Someone who is believed to be a paramedic can be heard in the video saying Prude was likely experiencing “excited delirium” as a result of the PCP that he was believed to have taken.
“I guarantee you that’s why he coded,” the woman can be heard saying.
Documents show that in the days and weeks following Prude’s arrest and ultimate death, police officials went back and forth regarding the narrative pertaining to the interaction.
At least one person had revised the paperwork and, using red ink, wrote “make him a suspect” next to a section of the police report that describes Prude as “Individual-I.”
Someone later wrote in red ink that Prude’s police narrative should also include burglary because “video recovered during the day shows (s) break window & enter location.”
The red ink later requests that a line be added to the narrative to describe how Prude was wearing a spit hood, called “a spit sock” in documents, “due to the potential of contracting a virus, including coronavirus.”
Warren has consistently maintained that she did not see the video until city lawyers played it for her on Aug. 4 and that Singletary initially misled her about the circumstances of Prude’s death.
After seeing the video, the mayor emailed Singletary that she was “outraged” at the conduct of the officer who pressed Prude’s head against the ground, Mark Vaughn, and that he should face an immediate disciplinary investigation.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren, left, speaks to the media during a press conference in Rochester, N.Y., Thursday, Sept. 3, 2020. (AP Photo/Adrian Kraus)
In an unsent draft of that email, Warren excoriated Singletary for having “grossly underplayed” Prude’s death by first describing it to her as a drug overdose. In the draft, prepared with Deputy Mayor James Smith’s help, Warren said she strongly believed Vaughn should be fired and that she would have asked for his termination in March, had she seen the footage then. She suspended Vaughn and six other officers last week.
A cursory management review that Smith conducted on the city’s handling of Prude’s death found that stalling the release of the body camera video because of concerns about optics cost did “considerable damage” to work the city has done to improve relations between the police and the public.
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“It is hard to rationalize how anyone who saw the video of Mr. Prude’s encounter with the RPD did not fully equate these events beyond a few mentions of bad publicity, politics, process or a ‘false narrative,’” Smith wrote. “Rochester is in desperate need of healing. We lost almost six months of opportunity to begin that process.”
Singletary announced his retirement on Sept. 8 as part of a major shakeup of the city’s police leadership. The outgoing chief, who had planned to stay on through the end of the month, accused critics of trying to “destroy my character and integrity.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Daniel Hoffman: America now more vulnerable than at time of Sept. 11 attacks — we need a forward defense appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>On the morning of September 11, 2001 a dear friend and former CIA colleague of mine was in Manhattan when Al Qaeda terrorists struck our homeland and murdered almost 3,000 innocent people in New York City, the Pentagon and Shanksville, Pa.
My friend was standing on the street near the World Trade Center when American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the North and South Towers.
Witnessing the deadliest terrorist attack in human history had the most significant impact on my former colleague’s career. He later told me that the images of innocent victims jumping from the towers to their deaths remain seared in his consciousness.
Up to that point he had never served in South Asia. But he would go on to serve multiple tours in conflict zones there as well as in the Middle East, on the front lines in the fight against terrorism.
Sept. 11, 2001, was transformational for me and my colleagues in the intelligence community, State Department and military — and for our entire nation.
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I recall my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, who spoke of remembering exactly where they were when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Today everyone in their late 20s and older remembers exactly where they were on September 11, 2001.
Al Qaeda’s horrific act of mass murder demonstrated that our enemies could reach us in spite of the oceans that separated us from Europe, Africa and Asia. We had become accustomed to sending troops off to foreign lands in wartime. Now the war on terrorism had reached the continental United States.
When I was serving as a CIA station chief in South Asia in 2016, a visiting congressman asked me when this “war” would be over so we could withdraw from the region.
The world is even more interconnected today, including through cyberspace. This makes America even more vulnerable to attack. At the same time, security precautions at airports and federal buildings, in particular, have increased considerably since Sept. 11, 2001.
One of the most critical lessons of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was that we need a robust forward presence to protect us, especially against threats emanating from ungoverned spaces. This includes intelligence collection, diplomacy and — when justified — military engagement so that we can detect threats and take appropriate action to prevent terrorists from striking us again.
A forward presence should be as small as necessary to accomplish the mission of defending our nation within a limited scope. Protecting America from attack should not be confused with an “endless war” or our failed efforts this century at nation-building.
What we need to do is follow the late columnist and Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer’s strategy of “forward defense.” This entails confronting our enemies “over there” rather than allowing them to plan and execute attacks on our homeland from ungoverned space in failed states.
Krauthammer believed we should only risk spilling our nation’s blood and treasure when there is a strategic necessity.
In this Sept. 11, 2001, file photo, smoke rises from the burning twin towers of the World Trade Center after hijacked planes crashed into the towers, in New York City. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)
I know from firsthand experience how our brave patriots serve in harm’s way to prevent attacks on our homeland. They put service to our country ahead of their own safety, comfort and earning potential. They serve often in the most dangerous locations while their families back home worry about them. But there is no place they would rather be than on the front lines, protecting our nation from ruthless adversaries who seek to do us harm.
The key is to settle on the minimal forward-deployed presence required to detect and preempt threats before they are visited on our shores. We’ve drawn down our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq by massive amounts since surges during the previous decade. The Trump administration announced Wednesday that further withdrawals will leave only 3,000 U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of September and 4,500 in Afghanistan by early November.
President Obama’s precipitous withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011, which helped create the conditions for the massive growth and spread of the ISIS terrorist group in the Middle East, is an admonition about the danger of withdrawing our forward-deployed capability before the threats are fully eliminated. Obama was forced to send combat troops back to Iraq in 2014 to fight ISIS.
When I was serving as a CIA station chief in South Asia in 2016, a visiting congressman asked me when this “war” would be over so we could withdraw from the region.
I told the congressman that as long as the local authorities were unable to eliminate the underlying causes of terrorism and as long as there were failed states — which terrorists exploit to recruit extremist followers and plot attacks against us — we would need to be on the watch and prepared to take action to defend ourselves in the most faraway places.
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Today Al Qaeda is still a threat. Its leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is still waging jihad. The U.S. destroyed the ISIS so-called caliphate in Iraq and Syria, but roughly 20,000 ISIS fighters have melted into an insurgency, which continues to threaten Iraq, the region and beyond.
We should start, therefore, with a clear assessment of the threats to our national security that emanate from terrorist hot spots like Afghanistan and Iraq. We can then consider how much or whether our forward-deployed U.S. military and intelligence personnel should withdraw even further — and if so, under what timetable and who should remain to work with forces of our allies.
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In a 2019 speech at the American University in Cairo, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emphasized that when “America retreats, chaos often follows.”
On this most solemn day, let us remember terrorism’s innocent victims and be deeply thankful to our brave patriots continuing to serve our grateful nation on the front lines.
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]]>The post Daniel Prude death raises new questions over New York Mental Hygiene Law, 911 calls involving PCP appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The death of Daniel Prude has shed new light on New York State’s mental health laws and how law enforcement officers respond to calls involving people high on the illegal hallucinogenic drug PCP.
Prude, a 41-year-old Black man, died after police in Rochester, N.Y., found him running naked in a street around 3 a.m. on March 23, put a hood over his head to stop him from spitting, then held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing. He died a week later after he was taken off life support.
In Monroe County, where Rochester is located, there have been nearly 7,000 mental hygiene transports so far this year, WHAM reported. The encounter between Prude and officers happened at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., and Prude allegedly told a witness he had contracted COVID-19.
ROCHESTER PROTESTERS PAINT ‘MURDERERS,’ ‘RESIGN’ ON STREET DURING DANIEL PRUDE DEMONSTRATIONS
In this image taken from police body camera video provided by Roth and Roth LLP on Sept. 2, 2020, a Rochester police officer puts a hood over the head of Daniel Prude, on March 23, 2020, in Rochester, N.Y. (Rochester Police via Roth and Roth LLP via AP)
His brother, Joe Prude, had called 911 seeking help for Daniel Prude’s unusual behavior twice within an 11-hour time frame. He had been taken to Strong Memorial Hospital for a mental health evaluation the night before but was released after a few hours, his brother told officers. According to police body camera footage, Joe Prude also told officers his brother was high on PCP, or phencyclidine, which is a DEA Schedule II controlled dangerous hallucinogenic drug.
“He tried to hurt himself because he jumped 21 stairs in my basement — head first,” Joe Prude purportedly told Rochester police the first time they responded to his address around 4 p.m., according to WHAM. “He was trying to harm himself.”
An autopsy report from the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled that Daniel Prude died by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint” and classified the manner of death a homicide. The report also stated Daniel Prude had a clinical history of “agitation and combative behavior” and “suicidal ideations and possible auditory hallucinations and paranoia.” Toxicology studies showed he was under “acute phencyclidine intoxication” at the time, according to a copy of the report obtained by WROC.
It remains unclear why Prude was released from the hospital after his brother’s first 911 call instead of being involuntarily committed.
ROCHESTER POLICE CHIEF, DEPUTY RETIRING AFTER DANIEL PRUDE DEATH
In this undated file photo provided by Roth and Roth LLP, shows Daniel Prude. Prude, 41, who suffocated after police in Rochester, N.Y., put a “spit hood” over his head while being taken into custody. (Courtesy Roth and Roth LLP via AP, File)
Strong Memorial Hospital is a subsidiary of the University of Rochester Medical Center, which issued a statement saying it reviewed the care provided to Daniel Prude in the hours before the police restraint that allegedly led to his death and said it was “medically appropriate and compassionate.” Medical privacy laws prevent the hospital from releasing additional information about Prude without permission from family members.
Under state law, a psychiatric emergency constitutes an instance where there’s “reasonable cause to believe that the person has a mental illness for which immediate observation, care and treatment in a hospital is appropriate and which is likely to result in serious harm to him/ herself or others.”
In order to classify as a psychiatric emergency, a peace or a police officer must transport the person to the hospital. The patient may be involuntarily held at the hospital for up to 72 hours, or even up to 15 days depending on an evaluation by a psychiatrist. However, a person who recovers from an instance of substance abuse can refuse treatment at any time, WHAM reported.
“Those people cannot be held against their will once they are back to their baseline and are no longer exhibiting behaviors that were in question,” Dr. Mary Marrocco, medical director of Behavioral Health and Emergency and Consult Services at Rochester Regional Health, told the station. She is not directly linked to Prude’s case but spoke generally about New York’s Mental Hygiene Law.
“The state law is very clear. We don’t want to be taking people’s freedom away from them if there isn’t a compelling reason to do so,” Marrocco said.
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Prude’s death sparked outrage after his relatives on Sept. 2 released police body camera video and written reports they obtained through a public records request. Seven police officers were suspended Thursday, and state Attorney General Letitia James said Saturday she would form a grand jury and conduct an “exhaustive investigation” into Prude’s death.
Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary, Deputy Chief Joseph M. Morabito, and two commanders retired Tuesday, while two more deputy chiefs and a commander gave up top leadership positions and returned to lower ranks. The outgoing chief accused critics of trying to “destroy my character and integrity.”
The University of Rochester Medical Center, and the Monroe County Mental Health Department, located within the Rochester Police Department, did not return Fox News requests for comment.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Daniel Gade, Virginia Senate candidate, sees military service parallels appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Daniel Gade says he doesn’t see his Senate bid in Virginia this year as all that different from his military service, which included losing his right leg after he survived an explosion in Iraq in 2004.
“When I was blown up, I was at a fork in the road. I was given an opportunity to either continue to serve or to get out and feel sorry for myself, and I continued to serve,” the Republican candidate said. “I don’t view this as a jump or as anything different than I’ve always done. It’s the same thing I’ve always done, which is to serve America, serve the American people, serve the Constitution.”
Though the percentage of former service members represented in Congress has declined in recent years, Mr. Gade is one of a number of military veterans seeking federal office in high-profile races this year.
Mr. Gade, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who has competed in Ironman races after having his right leg amputated, is trying to help Republicans break a drought in statewide races in Virginia that stretches back more than a decade.
He is taking on Sen. Mark R. Warner, a Democrat who is running for a third term after barely surviving a 2014 reelection bid in what was a banner year for Republicans.
Mr. Gade said if Virginia voters are interested in reelecting a “career politician,” then Mr. Warner is the candidate for them.
“He campaigned on being a centrist and being a problem-solver and being for Virginia and all of this stuff, and it was a big, huge lie,” said Mr. Gade, who teaches public policy at American University. “What he is is for his party. So when they need him to, he votes 100% party line on their issues.”
Mr. Warner, a self-styled “radical centrist,” has risen to prominence in recent years as the top Democrat on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The senator’s campaign countered that Mr. Gade is the true “partisan crusader” for touting President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus crisis as great leadership.
Mr. Gade said Mr. Trump, in general, is doing the best he can in the face of unheard-of obstacles.
“There are certainly areas where anybody, I think, can disagree with any administration,” he said. “But he has gone to Washington and he has tried his best to keep his promises in the face of what I would describe as unprecedented opposition from not just from the Democrats but the mainstream media as well. I mean, they are clearly out to get him.”
Mr. Trump nominated Mr. Gade, an advocate for people with disabilities, to serve on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Mr. Gade withdrew his name in December 2018 after the nomination languished in the Senate.
He said he was disappointed that his nomination “got caught up in a partisan food fight that had nothing to do with me.”
“It’s clear that career politicians have perverted the system, and they’re doing it to promote their own parties,” he said. “And let’s be honest: That happens on the Republican Party side as well.”
If elected, he said, he would like to serve on the Veterans’ Affairs and Armed Services committees.
“I have a real soft spot for, for example, people with disabilities or people with drug addiction for opioid abuse, or people who are suffering in some way because I know what suffering is like,” he said.
Mr. Gade is facing an uphill climb against Mr. Warner in a state that has morphed from a Republican stronghold to reliably Democratic over the past few decades.
Mr. Warner held a 21-point lead, 55% to 34%, over Mr. Gade, according to a Roanoke College poll taken Aug. 9-22.
Still, two-thirds of respondents said they didn’t know enough about Mr. Gade to form an opinion.
He said the under-the-radar nature of his candidacy could serve as an advantage and that he is not looking for national Republicans or forces outside the state for a bailout.
“And then all those same people who were like ‘Oh, Virginia’s not competitive,’ they’re going to come to me and want things from me, and I’m going to say, ‘Well, get away from me. I never knew you,’” he said.
Mr. Warner isn’t taking anything for granted after defeating Republican Ed Gillespie by less than 1 percentage point in 2014.
He amassed a war chest of more than $9 million at the start of July compared with about $225,000 for Mr. Gade.
The senator’s campaign said he has a proven track record of delivering for members of the military and veterans. He pointed to his efforts in securing adequate housing for the military and their families and fixing a flaw in the 2017 Republican tax cut law to allow injured veterans to recoup money from the IRS.
“The truth is Mark Warner has introduced over 100 bills with Republican co-sponsors. He’s willing to work with just about anybody to deliver results for Virginians,” campaign spokeswoman Kate Waters said.
Mr. Gade is trying to slow what has been a steady decline of members of Congress with military experience. Veterans make up about 18% of the current Congress. The number topped 70% in the 1970s.
In Michigan, Republican John James, a helicopter pilot in Iraq, is challenging Sen. Gary C. Peters, a Democrat who was in the Navy Reserve, in one of the Republican Party’s best pickup opportunities in the battle for control of the Senate.
On the Democratic side, Navy combat veteran Mark Kelly is challenging Republican Sen. Martha McSally, a former Air Force fighter pilot, in Arizona.
Democratic Senate challengers Cal Cunningham in North Carolina, M.J. Hegar in Texas and Amy McGrath in Kentucky also have military experience.
More than 100 House Republican candidates this year have military experience, according to House Republicans’ campaign arm.
A Military Times survey released last week found that 41% of active-duty troops said they would vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joseph R. Biden, compared with 37% who said they would support Mr. Trump.
A similar poll released right before the 2016 election found that 41% said they planned to vote for Mr. Trump, compared with 27% for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and 21% for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
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]]>The post Daniel Prude: grand jury to investigate death of Black man in spit hood appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>New York’s attorney general has moved to form a grand jury to investigate the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died after being hooded and held down by Rochester police earlier this year.
“The Prude family and the Rochester community have been through great pain and anguish,“ attorney general Letitia James said on Saturday in a statement about Prude’s death, which has sparked nightly protests and calls for reform.
She said the grand jury would be part of an “exhaustive investigation”.
Prude’s death after his brother called for help for his erratic behaviour in March has roiled New York’s third-largest city since video of the encounter was made public earlier this week, with protesters demanding more accountability for how it happened and legislation to change how authorities respond to mental health emergencies.
Daniel Prude: video released of police using ‘spit hood’ on black man who died of asphyxiation
“This is just the beginning,” Ashley Gantt, a protest organizer, said by email after James’ announcement. “We will not be stopped in our quest for truth and justice. It is always necessary to do what’s right.”
Another protest was planned for Saturday on the street where Prude was detained.
Advocates for legislation say Prude’s death and the actions of seven now-suspended Rochester police officers – including one who covered the Black man’s head with a “spit hood” during the March encounter – demonstrate how police are ill-equipped to deal with people suffering mental problems.
Having police respond can be a “recipe for disaster,” the National Alliance on Mental Illness said in a statement Friday.
Prude’s death “is yet another harrowing tragedy, but a story not unfamiliar to us,” the advocacy group said. “People in crisis deserve help, not handcuffs.”
Stanley Martin, an organizer of Free the People Rochester, told reporters: “We do not need violent workers with guns to respond to mental health crises.”
Activists have marched nightly in the city of 210,000 on Lake Ontario since police body camera videos of the encounter with Prude were released by his family Wednesday.
Friday night’s protest resulted in 11 arrests, police said. As they had the night before, officers doused activists at police headquarters with a chemical spray to drive them from barricades around the building.
As the night wore on, demonstrators were pushed further back, as police fired what appeared to be pepper balls. Fireworks were shot off and a bus stop was set on fire.
Prude’s family has said he appeared to be spiralling into crisis in the hours before police handcuffed him on a street and pinned the naked man face down. In the video, police are also seen covering his head with the white “spit hood,” designed to protect police from bodily fluids.
“You’re trying to kill me!” the 41-year-old man is heard saying. He died days later in what the medical examiner ruled was a homicide.
A police union has defended the officers involved in the encounter, saying they were strictly following department training and protocols, including using the mesh hood.
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]]>The post Daniel Prude’s daughter blames ‘racist police officers’ for father’s death at press conference | TheHill appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The daughter of a Chicago man who died after Rochester, N.Y., police detained him in March for running naked in the street while in some sort of mental distress blamed “racist” police officers for her father’s death on Thursday.
During a press conference held remotely, Prude’s 18-year-old daughter Tashyrah Prude pointed out that her father appeared to follow all police commands in video of the incident released by family this week before his death by asphyxiation in Rochester police custody.
“A racist police officer saw a Black man in need and decided that he just didn’t deserve to live,” Tashyrah Prude said.
“I don’t understand how anybody could say or feel like he was a threat to the police when he complied with all orders,” she continued, adding: “There’s nothing that anyone could say that could convince me that he was a threat to the police officers.”
Daniel Prude’s daughter Tashyra Prude: “I don’t understand how anybody could say or feel like he was a threat to the police when he complied with all orders … A racist police officer saw a Black man in need and decided that he just didn’t deserve to live.” pic.twitter.com/FWWKsBSPJG
— The Recount (@therecount) September 3, 2020
Officers are seen on the video slamming Prude’s face into the pavement and placing a so-called “spit hood” over his head. New York’s attorney general, Letitia James (D), has reportedly been investigating the incident for months.
A medical examiner ruled that Prude, 41, was the victim of a homicide as a result of “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” while noting that he also was found to have the hallucinogenic drug PCP in his system.
The city’s mayor said at a press conference Wednesday that officials had declined to release information about Prude’s death before now due to the ongoing AG investigation.
“I want everyone to understand that at no point in time did we feel that this was something that we wanted not to disclose,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren (D) said. “We are precluded from getting involved in it until that agency [the AG’s office] has completed their investigation.”
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]]>The post Daniel Prude: Family wants officers charged after video of arrest emerges appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The family of a Black man who reportedly died of suffocation after police officers put a hood over his head and pressed his face into the ground during an arrest last March in Rochester, N.Y., called for the firing and murder charges for involved officers Wednesday.
Daniel Prude, 41, died on March 30 after he was removed from life support a week after his arrest, The New York Times reported.
Prude’s brother, Joe Prude, called officers’ actions during his brother’s arrest “cold-blooded murder” in a news conference held by the family that highlighted the newly released police body camera footage.
“How many more brothers got to die for society to understand that this needs to stop?” he said in front of reporters. The encounter was not made public until Wednesday.
Joe Prude first called police on March 23 to report his brother had run out of the house in an agitated mental state. A truck driver also reported Daniel Prude was on the street naked, shouting and trying to break into a car while claiming he had the coronavirus, according to The Times.
The body camera footage shows officers handcuffing Daniel Prude and putting what’s called a spit hood over his head, according to the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester.
ROCHESTER POLICE PUT HOOD ON BLACK MAN KILLED BY ASPHYXIATION
In this image taken from police body camera video provided by Roth and Roth LLP, Rochester police officers hold down Daniel Prude on March 23 in Rochester, N.Y. Prude, a Black man who had run naked through the streets of the western New York city, died of asphyxiation after a group of police officers put a hood over his head, then pressed his face into the pavement for two minutes, according to video and records released Wednesday by the man’s family. (Rochester Police via Roth and Roth LLP via AP)
Still clearly agitated, Daniel Prude is pushed to the ground by officers after he shouts “Give me that gun!”
One officer holds his face to the ground while another appears to put his knee on his back while he still has the hood over his head, according to the video.
While on the ground, Daniel Prude demands the hood be removed before an officer allegedly slammed his head into the street, police reports said. Another reportedly held his head against the pavement while ordering him to “stop spitting.”
Daniel Prude stops moving or speaking then appears to get sick. One officer asks him if he’s OK before a paramedic performs CPR on him and he’s taken away in an ambulance.
The medical examiner ruled his death a homicide by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James and the Rochester police chief said they are investigating. The officers involved reportedly still have their jobs.
PCP intoxication was a contributing factor in his death, the autopsy report said, according to The Times.
“I know that there is a rhetoric that is out there that this is a cover-up,” Rochester Police Chief La’Ron D. Singletary said, in a separate news conference Wednesday, adding that he understood people are frustrated with the lengthy investigation. “This is not a cover-up.”
James said in a statement: “The death of Daniel Prude was a tragedy, and I extend my deepest condolences to his family. I share the community’s concerns about ensuring a fair and independent investigation into his death and support their right to protest. As with every investigation, we will follow the facts of this case and ensure a complete and thorough examination of all relevant parties. We will work tirelessly to provide the transparency and accountability that all our communities deserve.”
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he hadn’t seen the footage but called the case “very disturbing.”
Fox News’ Louis Casiano contributed to this report.
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]]>The post Daniel Cameron, Kentucky attorney general appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>Kentucky’s first black Attorney General Daniel Cameron warned Americans not to vote for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in November, who he said was backward thinking and a captive of the radical left.
Speaking at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, Mr. Cameron said the former vice president would destroy jobs, raise taxes, and bow to cancel culture.
“He is captive to the radical left, a movement committed to cancel culture and the destruction of public discourse. They believe your skin color must dictate your politics. If you fail to conform while exercising your God given right to speak and think freely, they will cut you down,” Mr. Cameron said.
He rejected identity politics and mob rule, noting the Republican Party encourages individuals to think for themselves and pursue the American dream.
“That’s my Republican Party, the Party of Lincoln, that believes America is an indispensable nation…an Evergreen Tree, standing tall in a turbulent world. And that’s why I am voting for Donald Trump for President,” he said.
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]]>The post Daniel Lewis Lee executed; first use of death penalty in 17 years appeared first on Virus Reports.
]]>The U.S. government on Tuesday carried out the first federal execution in almost two decades, putting to death a man who killed an Arkansas family in a 1990s in a plot to build a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.
Daniel Lewis Lee, 47, of Yukon, Oklahoma, died by lethal injection at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana.
“I didn’t do it,” Lee said just before he was executed. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I’m not a murderer. … You’re killing an innocent man.”
Lee’s death Tuesday came a day after a federal judge halted the first federal execution in 17 years just hours before it was scheduled to take place.
Citing the potential pain inflicted by the lethal injection cocktail, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan stopped the scheduled execution of Daniel Lewis Lee, a former white supremacist who murdered an Alabama gun dealer, his wife and their 8-year-old daughter in 1996.
The Justice Department immediately filed a notice with the court saying it intends to appeal Judge Chutkan’s ruling.
Government lawyers called Judge Chutkan’s ruling “inappropriate,” saying it “conflicts with binding Supreme Court precedent.”
In her ruling, Judge Chutkan scolded the Trump administration, accusing the president’s team of rushing the execution process and preventing inmates from fully litigating their appeals.
Inmates and others on their behalf have filed multiple legal challenges to the executions, ranging from fears of traveling to a prison amid the coronavirus pandemic to claims the drugs used in lethal injection violate the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishments.
“The succession of last-minute rulings is the result of the Government’s decision to set short execution dates even as many claims, including those addressed here, were pending,” Judge Chutkan wrote. “The Government is entitled to choose dates, but the court cannot take shortcuts in its obligations in order to accommodate those dates.”
— Associated Press material was used in this report.
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