New York dismisses the process of police officers for the death of an African American

New York, Feb 23 (EFE) .- A New York grand jury has refused to prosecute several police officers accused of the death of the African-American citizen Daniel Prude in March 2020, when he was in police custody in the town of Rochester, and that sparked protests in that city, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced Tuesday.
“In the course of our investigation we concluded that there was sufficient evidence surrounding Prude’s death to warrant bringing the case to a grand jury. We presented the most consistent case possible,” James said at a conference where he sadly announced that the members of the grand jury had refused to prosecute the agents.
The attorney general said she was “extremely disappointed” by the decision of the grand jury whose function is to determine if there is sufficient evidence to start a trial.
“I know that the Rochester community and communities across the country are rightly disappointed by this result,” said James who, thanking the jury members for their service, insisted that “the The criminal justice system has thwarted efforts to hold security officers accountable for their actions. ”
Prude, who was suffering from some kind of psychotic episode and was semi-naked when the police officers intervened, was handcuffed and hooded to stop him spitting.
An investigation by the police department concluded in April 2020 that the arrest was made following the protocols and training received.
However, coroners determined the death to be a homicide by suffocation.
Information about his death was kept out of the reach of public opinion, until at the beginning of August the lawyers of the victim’s family released the video of his arrest, which sparked protests in the city amid the anti-racist movement Black Lives Matter, which had been unleashed the previous May by the murder of the black citizen George Floyd, at the hands of policemen.
For the attorney general, the “judicial system urgently needs reform.”
“The system has been built to protect and shield officers from their wrongdoing and the accountability system, too often, allows officers to use lethal force unnecessarily without consequences, and this is so because the system has its fundamentals broken, “Letitia said before proposing various measures.
The first of these, that police officers, but also personnel who attend emergency calls and medical services are trained to recognize the symptoms of agitated delirium syndrome, suffered by the victim, and respond in these situations as in an emergency serious medical.
Among other recommendations, he also proposed the creation of models to minimize or eliminate police responses to situations related to mental health problems “whenever possible”, as well as to train police officers in techniques to de-escalate situations.
“The cornerstone of this effort is to reform the law of the use of force from one that considers it a mere subjective necessity to one that defines it as the absolute last resort to which to resort once all other non-lethal means have been exhausted, before resort to deadly force, “James told a news conference in Rochester.

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