Rochester police in New York on Sunday released body cameras showing officers handcuffed and pepper squirting a 9-year-old girl while responding to a call for “ family issues. ”
The two disturbing videos show the ailing child screaming for her father as officers tried to restrain her and leave her in a police car on Friday afternoon.
“You act like a child,” a male officer overhears her in the video.
“I am a child,” she shouts.
“I’m going to give you pepper spray, and I don’t want to,” a female officer tells the girl, trying to persuade her to put her feet in the police car.
‘This is your last chance. Otherwise, pepper spray will go into your eyeballs, ”the officer says.
The girl, whose face was blurry in the videos, begs the officers not to spray her. After she gets pepper spray, she shouts, “It went in my eyes, it went in my eyes.”
Officials have not identified the child, her family or any of the agents involved in the incident.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’s okay for a 9-year-old to be sprayed with pepper spray,” Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said at a news conference Sunday. ‘That’s not it. I don’t see who we are as a department. ‘
The incident prompted a new investigation into a police department whose top officials resigned last September after protests over the death of Daniel Prude, a black man who died of asphyxiation after Rochester agents put a hood over his head and ground him. had printed.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said Friday’s incident was “not something any of us would want to justify.”
She said the young girl reminded her of her own daughter.
‘I have a ten-year-old daughter. So she is a child. She’s a baby, ”said Warren. “And I can tell you, as a mother, this video is not something you want to see.”
“I saw my baby’s face in her face,” she said in an emotional appeal for compassion and empathy in the way police officers act in the community.
Warren said she has asked the police chief to conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the incident, adding that she appreciated a review by the police accountability council.
Agents who responded to a report of ‘family problems’ at around 3:21 p.m. local time on Friday pointed out that the 9-year-old girl was’ upset’ and ‘suicidal’ and had indicated that she ‘wanted to commit suicide and that she wanted her mother murder, ”Andre Anderson, deputy police chief of Rochester, said Sunday.
The body’s camera video shows a male officer following the girl, wearing a hoodie with colorful leggings and a backpack, as she tried to run.
While the officer tries to calm the girl down, she has a heated argument with her mother about a family dispute. The officer then asks the mother to leave.
Anderson said the officer decided to “get the child out of the situation and get her into a car where we could get her help.”
But the young girl refused, he said, and “whipped around,” at one point an officer kicked in the chest and knocked off a body worn camera.
The video shows officers struggling to restrain the child as she repeatedly shouts, “I want my dad.”
The officers then handcuff the child while she is on the snow-covered ground and try to get her into the police car.
“I just want to see my father, please,” the child begs, asking for a “girl officer.”
In the second body camera video, the female cop is seen trying to calm the child and get her to put her legs in the car and promise her she will try to find her father.
After unsuccessful attempts, the officer warns the sobbing girl that she will pepper spray her if she doesn’t obey.
A male officer says, “Just spray her. Just spray her at this point.”
The female officer shakes a can; a can is also seen in the hand of the other officer. It is unclear who peppered the child.
It didn’t seem like she was opposed to the agents. She tried not to be restricted from going to the hospital, ”Anderson said. “While the officers made numerous attempts to get her into the car, an officer sprayed the young child with OC spray to get her into the car.”
She was then transported to Rochester General Hospital and later released.
Anderson said he was not trying to “make excuses for what happened” and that changes will come by “actually talking to the agents involved and letting them watch de-escalation.”
“Our overall goal is to change culture,” he said.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org. You can also text TALK to 741741 for free, anonymous 24/7 crisis support in the US through the Crisis Text Line.