Rochester Mayor Malik Evans Settles the Lawsuit Brought by Daniel Prude's Estate for $12 Million!

Ahh, the power of money!

Today, Rochester's mayor, Malik Evans, settled with the estate of Daniel Prude for the sum of $12 million! 

In his usual, mealy-mouthed way, he stated that it was time to put the Prude affair behind us and the $12 million settlement was probably cheaper than the cost to Rochester would be if the case went to court.

"Probably."

Mahweak seems to have forgotten the grand jury called by NYS Attorney General Tish James refused to indict the RPD officers involved in the arrest of Daniel Prude. They did not feel that the officers behaved in a criminally culpable manner.

THAT evidence could have been used in the court case in favor of Rochester.

Instead, Mahweak threw away $12 million to the Prude family to shut them up.

In the long run, it probably won't.

I have dealt extensively with the death of Daniel Prude in previous blogs, so I will provide only a cursory glance here.

Daniel Prude was a drug addicted out-of-towner with psychiatric problems who came to Rochester at the end of March 2020. Within that one day he was placed under a mental hygiene arrest, evaluated, released, bolted from his brother's home, found a place to buy illegal drugs, used them, had a psychotic experience, ran naked through Rochester's streets on a cold night, was apprehended by RPD officers, who put a spit bag over his head and he stopped breathing.

He was taken to a hospital and placed on life support for a week, from which Prude was then removed and he died.

Because he was brain dead when they brought him in.

And the medical examiner cited Prude's death as a homicide caused by complications of asphyxia during physical restraint with the illegal drug PCP as a contributing factor.

For nearly six months, Mayor Lovely Warren, her administration, her then-police chief La'Ron Singletary and a host of other members of City Hall's bureaucracy attempted to maintain a conspiracy of silence regarding the death of Daniel Prude, which ultimately blew up in their faces when it became public in September 2020.

Furthermore, Singletary tried to bully the medical examiner into changing the cause of death on Prude's death certificate to "drug overdose." She refused.

Hence the Prude family's lawsuit against the City of Rochester.

And Mayor Mahweak settled it today for $12 million while admitting no liability on the part of the City of Rochester regarding Prude's death.

And Singletary is now running for Congress as a Republican "law and order" candidate!

Do I hear laughter in the background?

The settlement with Prude's "estate," by the way, is by far more than the death benefits received by the families of slain RPD officers Daryl Pierson and Tony Mazurkiewicz, killed in the course of duty by the feral urban humanoids that infest our fair city.

One also has to understand that during his life, Daniel Prude wasn't worth a plugged nickel to anyone.

Had Prude simply died of an overdose or during a psychotic fit while not in police custody, there would have been no multi-million-dollar lawsuits against anyone.

That's the irony here.

The way the settlement reads is that Prude's children (five of them, apparently) will receive $6 million for "wrongful death" and $6 million for "pain and suffering!"

The family, in turn, will pay their attorneys nearly $4 million, one third of the settlement, which apparently is the usual deal for high ticket lawsuits.

Still, it was a pretty damned good haul given Prude's lack of intrinsic value.

Prude family attorney Eliott Shields stated that while no amount of money can bring Daniel Prude back (no kidding), "we are happy that the money will compensate Daniel Prude's children for this tragedy."

Uh huh.

Considering he would never have had anything to leave them had he died under different circumstances.

Then there was that statement by "the family" that since Prude's death there have been no systemic changes (there's that word again: systemic) in the way RPD handles dealing with Black men.

The fact that they accepted the cash and ran like deer while Citygov claimed no liability made that statement a tad hypocritical.

Pardon my cynical nature, but wasn't it always about the money?

If they were really sincere, they would have demanded that Mahweak 'fess up. And make that part and parcel of the settlement.

But they didn't.

Because it was always about the money.

Yes, our mental health professionals who treated Daniel Prude failed in their job and turned him loose after a few hours only to meet his unfortunate end shortly afterwards.

But the family didn't sue them.

Because it was always about the money.

And suing city governments and police departments is always a lucrative pastime "to teach them a lesson."

They learned that after the death of George Floyd in May of 2020.

And they learned their lessons well, that mourning becomes them at $1.6 million a pop!

As for Mayor Mahweak?

I strongly suspect that the reason he chose to settle this case out of court was not because he was afraid the city would lose, but because the city might have won.

That would have been a shot in the arm to the prestige and morale of the Rochester Police Department.

And that is something that our anti-cop mayor and anti-cop Citygov couldn't bear to see happen.

Hence the settlement.