RPD

The Rochester Police Accountability Board announced Tuesday that it is launching its first formal investigation, targeting the Rochester Police Department’s response to the Black Lives Matter protests of last year.

The board is looking to evaluate RPD’s current policy on crowd control and how force was utilized in the protests, as well as past crowd control efforts at events like the Puerto Rican Festival.

Three Rochester men are seeking a federal monitor for the Rochester Police Department as part of an excessive force and false arrest lawsuit they’ve filed against the department.

State Supreme Court Justice Ann Marie Taddeo has temporarily blocked the city of Rochester from publicly releasing the disciplinary files of any Rochester police officer.

Rochester Police have a person in custody in connection with an incident on Hague St. Tuesday where an RPD officer was shot and injured.

Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said late Tuesday afternoon that the officer, who has not been identified, was treated at the hospital and released.

It happened just before 8 a.m. when police said the suspect, James Hunter, 54, was trying to break into a house. Officials said that when an officer responded, multiple shots were fired and the officer was struck at least once in the upper body.

The state Attorney General’s Office on Friday released six redacted video clips of Daniel Prude’s fatal encounter with Rochester police officers, all of which came from the officers’ body-worn cameras.

The Attorney General’s Office released the videos along with body and dash camera footage of Troy Hodge’s fatal encounter with police in Lockport, Niagara County. The office has ongoing investigations into the death of both men, and it has convened a grand jury for its Prude inquiry.

The Police Accountability Board in Rochester has its first executive director. The board has hired Conor Dwyer Reynolds after a search that attracted more than 150 candidates.

Reynolds is a Rochester native, attended the University of Rochester and has a law degree from Yale. He also worked in the Obama Administration. His most recent position was teaching law at Yale, and a statement from the PAB said that he partnered with Rochester's City Roots Community Land Trust to address racism in Monroe County.

An attorney representing the family of Daniel Prude will argue in state court Thursday that the city of Rochester withheld some records that he and his co-counsel requested regarding Prude’s death at the hands of Rochester police officers.

Elliot Shields filed a complaint in state Supreme Court on Sept. 21 alleging that the city did not fully respond to an April 3 open records request for all communications and body-worn camera footage related to Prude’s fatal encounter with police on March 23.

The new interim chief of the Rochester Police Department was sworn in at City Hall on Wednesday.

Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan becomes the first woman to lead the department; she was named chief by Mayor Lovely Warren last month.

Herriott-Sullivan comes in at a challenging time for that department with racial justice rallies this year for George Floyd and Daniel Prude and ongoing protests as recently as Tuesday night.