Protesters and police clashed in Rochester on May 30, 2020. Officers with the Rochester Police Department brutalized protesters, lawyers, and innocent bystanders during Black Lives Matter protests in September, according to a federal lawsuit filed in the United States Western New York District Court.
The complaint was filed Monday on behalf of several key players in Rochester’s recent protest movement, including the organizing group Free the People Roc, organizers Anthony Hall and Stanley Martin, and the National Lawyers’ Guild of Rochester, which provided legal services during the protests in the summer and fall of 2020.
The suit alleges the Rochester Police Department used extreme force in responding to protests, and the use of crowd control measures falls into a long history of the department abusing its power.
Rochester police refuse to combat racism in ranks, says lawsuit sparked by Daniel Prude protests syracuse.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from syracuse.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Created: April 05, 2021 05:55 PM
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WHEC) There have been 40 civil rights lawsuits against the Rochester Police Department in the last decade, but none of them detail instances of force like the one filed in federal court Monday.
The stories in the lawsuit go back to the shooting death of a young black woman by Rochester Police in 1975 up to the pepper-spraying of a 9-year-old girl by RPD two months ago. And like previous lawsuits, it demands the appointment of someone to come in, oversee the RPD and reform the way it operates.
The lawsuit is 96 pages long. It includes 50 instances where RPD shot, physically handled and or pepper-sprayed people in the city. All but one of the plaintiffs named on the cover of the lawsuit are people alleging they were injured by RPD while they protested the death of Daniel Prude.
Tim Curtin, city s top lawyer, to resign in June after Council presses mayor to fire him rochestercitynewspaper.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from rochestercitynewspaper.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
March 13, 2021 Share
An investigation into the official response to Daniel Prude’s police suffocation death last year in Rochester, New York, is faulting the city’s mayor and former police chief for keeping critical details of the case secret for months and lying to the public about what they knew.
The report, commissioned by Rochester’s city council and made public Friday, said Mayor Lovely Warren lied at a September press conference when she said it wasn’t until August that she learned officers had physically restrained Prude during the March 23, 2020, arrest that led to his death.
Warren was told that very day that officers had used physical restraint, the report said, and by mid-April she, then-Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and other officials were aware Prude had died as a result and the officers were under criminal investigation.