Annapolis Alderman DaJuan Gay said he was alarmed to learn the June death of a man who suffered cardiac arrest in city police and fire department custody had been ruled a homicide after Baltimore Sun Media exposed the findings of Renardo Green’s autopsy report last week.

City and community leaders share Gay’s concern about the lack of transparency into the death investigation.

“Constituents are pissed off because they feel left out of the loop,” Gay said Friday. “I’m just shocked. I’m shocked.”

Gay, a Democrat, and two other city officials watched police body camera footage in June that showed police and fire personnel’s interaction with Green before he suffered cardiac arrest, but Gay was not told a medical examiner later determined Green’s manner of death to be a homicide. Green was a constituent of Ward 6, Gay’s district.

Green, 51, died in the hospital three days after he suffered cardiac arrest while handcuffed and strapped to a stretcher chest down in an Annapolis Fire Department ambulance, according to the autopsy report signed Sept. 20.

Dr. Victor W. Weedn, Maryland’s chief medical examiner, ruled Green’s cause of death was “prone restraint cardiac arrest.” He also found that drug intoxication contributed.

Green was restrained on his stomach, which prevented him from breathing, caused his heart to stop and led to his becoming brain-dead, according to the autopsy report.

Other members of the City Council said they were not briefed on Green’s death in June or the findings of his autopsy report, despite Mayor Gavin Buckley, a Democrat, having known about the report for weeks. Community leaders, too, expressed frustration with the city for withholding information about the incident.

“I would have hoped that the city would have been more transparent as it related to the death of Renardo Green,” said Carl Snowden, convener of the Caucus of African American Leaders of Anne Arundel County.

Snowden, a former alderman, said he was surprised the City Council was not informed about the circumstances of Green’s death.

“At a minimum, you would have thought council members would have been briefed that this has happened,” said Alderman Ross Arnett, a Democrat from Ward 8. “We would have been involved in discussions about how it would be handled.”

Without knowing the facts of the incident, the elected officials said they can’t determine whether the city needs to evaluate or change public safety protocols.

Green’s wife called police and paramedics to her apartment around 2 a.m. June 1 because he was under the influence of PCP and being destructive, according to the 911 call.

Police did not arrest Green but placed him in custody for an emergency medical evaluation. Police handcuffed Green behind his back and turned him on his side. Emergency medical services moved Green, restrained on his stomach, to the ambulance and began to load him into the vehicle when he became unresponsive, according to police reports.

Green died June 4 at Anne Arundel Medical Center, three days after he was placed on a ventilator and considered brain-dead, according to his family.

Arnett and Alderman Rob Savidge, a Democrat from Ward 7, introduced a bill in April aimed at improving trust between police and the community by requiring certain Annapolis police practices and standards in the City Code.

Savidge withdrew the bill after the state legislature passed a package of police reform bills in April to boost transparency and accountability from police.

The legislation, which took effect Oct. 1, stripped local authorities of the responsibility to review deaths at the hands of law enforcement. A unit within the office of Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and a team of Maryland State Police troopers now handle all the investigations.

A spokesperson for Frosh’s office said the unit doesn’t look into deaths that occurred before the law took effect.

A state police spokesperson said its homicide unit hasn’t been called to investigate Green’s death.

An Anne Arundel County police spokesperson said the same, noting that Annapolis police still were listed as the agency investigating it, despite the city saying the case was exclusively under the control of the state’s attorney’s office.

Spokespersons from the state’s attorney’s office, city police and fire departments, and city attorney’s office declined to answer or did not respond late last week to questions about Green’s death. Buckley acknowledged Friday that the autopsy report determined Green’s death was a homicide and said the case was in the hands of Anne Colt Leitess, Anne Arundel County’s state’s attorney.

Harold “Mo” Lloyd III, an Annapolis resident and founder of Superior Future, a nonprofit that hosts youth programs in the city’s underrepresented communities, said city and county agencies have stumbled by keeping the circumstances of Green’s death hushed.

“We have been arguing about transparency for over a year now,” Lloyd said.

He questioned how the city expects to strengthen trust between residents when its agencies fail todisclose sensitive information.

“If our public-funded institutions are willing to hide information like this, it makes you wonder what else are they hiding; what else have they hid over the years?” Lloyd said.