The ex-police chief did not see anything “ obvious ” in the video of Daniel Prude

ROCHESTER, NY – The former Rochester police chief said he initially saw nothing “glaring” in the body camera video of officers restraining Daniel Prude, the black man who died after being detained naked on a city street last winter.

La’Ron Singletary, who was sacked by the mayor after the video went public, answered questions on Friday in a testimony that was broadcast live for hours about the city’s handling of the case. City council’s review of the facts is separate from an ongoing grand jury investigation into Prude’s death.

The video shows Prude handcuffed and naked with a balaclava over her head as an officer pushes her face against the ground, while another officer rests a knee against her back in the early morning of March 23. The officers held him down for about two minutes. until he stops breathing. It was removed from the respiratory system a week later.

Singletary said he spoke with Mayor Lovely Warren twice on March 23 and then looked at some of the body camera footage from the scene, according to the Democrat and the Rochester Chronicle.

“It turned out that there was nothing out of the ordinary at the time,” Singletary told Warren. “I explained to the mayor that we were going to do an investigation. I told the mayor that there had been no strike, there had been no punches regarding the video. “

The county medical examiner said the death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxiation under physical restraint” and cited PCP as a contributing factor.

The Prude family held a press conference and released the video on September 2, sparking nightly protests in Rochester.

Singletary claimed in legal documents filed in December that Warren had urged her to omit the facts and give false information to substantiate her claim that it was only months later that she learned the key details of the encounter with the police which led to Prude’s death. On Friday, he said he was asked to “provide false information to support his account.”

The city released a statement Friday saying Singletary “has played down what has happened from the start until today, and believes neither he nor anyone from the Rochester Police Department has done anything wrong.