Spit Hoods (Part One)

Two months prior to George Floyd’s killing, a young Black man named Daniel Prude died from suffocation after being put in a ‘spit hood’ during an arrest.  

A spit hood is exactly what it sounds like. Made of mesh fabric, they’re placed over the heads of suspects exhibiting spitting behaviors to protect officers from a detainee's saliva. Social service advocates frequently claim the intervention is too extreme, often causing panic in the recipient and make it harder to notice if the hooded suspect is having difficulty breathing. The law enforcement side of this is that no cop wants to get coated in spit from some guy half out of his mind hurling loogeys every which way. Yet spit hoods have been noted as a possible factor in a number of arrestee asphyxiation deaths across the country.

Prude’s death came under a broader spotlight in September of 2020 for two reasons – the ongoing civil rights struggles in Black Lives Matter advocacy, and the fact that details of his arrest, including police body camera video, were released that week through a public records request.

Seven police officers were suspended. Lovely Warren, the mayor of Rochester, outright admitted in a press conference that systemic racism led to Prude’s death, that he was failed by their police department, the mental health system, society, even herself. She went on to say what she saw in the newly released video was ‘entirely different’ from how her police chief La’Ron Singletary originally relayed the arrest to her. Singletary claimed it was no cover up, that it was a simple medical intervention.

Turns out, what a shocker, Daniel Prude had acute mental health issues.