Police in Rochester, New York, have been criticized again after body cameras showed an officer spraying a handcuffed nine-year-old girl with pepper spray.
Video released by police revealed that the girl was being restrained after officers were called to a family riot on Friday. Crying and screaming “I want my dad”, the girl was led to a police car and sitting in the back seat when a male officer told his colleague, “Just spray her at this point.”
Police continue with pepper spray for the nine-year-old, who yells and shouts, “Please wipe my eyes.” An officer then closes the door to the car. The video shows that at least seven agents were present.
Rochester police were already under surveillance for the death of a mentally ill black man in March 2020. Daniel Prude, 41, died of suffocation after officers put a hood over his head and pressed his head on the sidewalk for two minutes.
Rochester police released body cameras six months after Prude’s death, after his family sued the city. The incident sparked national outcry. The police chief was fired.
Regarding the incident on Friday, Andre Anderson, deputy police chief of Rochester, said officers were told the girl “indicated she wanted to kill herself and kill her mother.”
Anderson told reporters that officers chased the girl as she tried to flee. Police decided to take the nine-year-old to hospital, but Anderson said the girl refused to get into a police car.
“It didn’t seem like she was resisting the agents, she was trying not to be constrained 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.”
The video shows officers grappling with the nine-year-old in the snow. At one point an officer says, “You act like a child.”
The girl replies, “I am a child.”
Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said, “I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’s okay for a nine-year-old to be sprayed with pepper spray. We’re going to do the work we need to do to make sure things like this don’t happen. “
However, the president of the Rochester Police Association defended the agents involved.
“[The officer] there made a decision that he thought was the best action to take. It did not harm her, ”Mike Mazzeo, president of the Rochester Police Locust Club, told reporters. “If they had to push further and use more force, chances are she could have been worse.”
Mazzeo added, “It’s very, very difficult to get someone in the back of a police car like this.”
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said that as the mother of a 10-year-old daughter, the video “isn’t all you want to see”.
In a statement, Warren added, “I am very concerned about the kink and handcuffs of a child who is in need and clearly emotional.”