ROCHESTER, NY (AP) – A 9-year-old black girl sprayed with police pepper pleaded “please don’t do this to me” and “it burns” while waiting handcuffed in the back seat of a police car for 16 minutes, according to with new images from the police corps camera released on Thursday.
The city of Rochester suspended the officers seen in an initial video released on Sunday, spraying an irritating chemical onto the face of the disturbed and handcuffed child. Mayor Lovely A. Warren said the city had released nearly 90 minutes of additional video of the January 29 detention to be transparent.
In the video, the girl can be heard crying and whimpering that she wants her father and saying that her eyes are burning when a policeman says an ambulance is on the way, but has been slowed by snowy roads.
“Policeman, please don’t do this to me,” she says at one point.
“You did this to yourself, dear,” replies the policeman.
The girl’s mother’s lawyer could not be reached immediately for comment if she saw the new video.
The girl asks several times when the ambulance will come to clean the pepper spray from her eyes and begs for the handcuffs to be removed while the liquid drips into her mouth.
“If you stick your head in the direction of the window, the cold air will feel good,” says a policeman as the wait extends.
“It’s burning a lot,” she says.
“It is to burn. It’s called pepper spray, ”she said.
The girl’s mother, Elba Pope, said she called the police during an argument with her husband, but asked police officers to call mental health services when it became clear that her fourth-grade daughter was about to collapse.
The video shows police officers screaming and scolding the girl, saying they are losing patience as they fight in the snow to get her in the back of a police vehicle.
Police are suspended pending an investigation. Warren said he asked police chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan to complete it quickly.
Pope filed a notice of complaint, preserving his right to sue.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said the new videos released on Thursday were “even more shocking and disturbing” than the video released on Sunday.
“New Yorkers in every corner of the state are disgusted by these actions and, as the father of three daughters, I am furious,” said Cuomo in a prepared statement.
The harsh treatment of the girl occurred while the Rochester police are being investigated for the death of Daniel Prude last spring. The police handcuffed Prude, put a hood over his head and pressed him to the floor until he stopped breathing.