The Rochester Police Department in New York on Thursday released an extensive camera sequence of the incident late last month, in which police threw pepper spray at a 9-year-old girl.
In the footage, that the police department posted on youtube, several of the nine officers who responded to a The call report can be heard threatening the girl as they struggle to put her in the back seat of a police car.
“Listen to me – you’ll be sprayed if you don’t get in,” said a police officer, according to the footage.
“Get in the car,” says another. “I got tired of telling you.”
“I’m going to spray you with pepper spray and I don’t want to,” said a police officer. “Then sit down.”
“Please don’t,” says the girl.
One of the policemen eventually applies pepper spray to the girl, closing the door as she yells, “My eye is bleeding!”
“Cop,” she says, sobbing to a cop in front of the car, “please don’t do this to me.”
The officer then replies, “You did this to yourself, dear.”
The 90-minute footage, significantly longer than the 11-minute video released shortly after the incident, came as part of the city’s commitment to “be transparent and share all information and videos about this incident,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren ( D) said.
“I continue to share our community’s outrage at the treatment of this child,” added Warren, according to The New York Times.
Deputy Chief of Police Andre Anderson said during a press conference when the initial footage of the police was released, the officers were told that the girl “indicated that she wanted to kill herself and wanted to kill her mother”.
Anderson added that the girl ran away from home and was chased by a police officer. The police then tried to put the girl in a police vehicle for several minutes, as the girl refused, calling her father, fighting and at one point kicking the camera off a policeman’s body before another pepper spray on her.
Anderson said at the time that the child was taken to Rochester General Hospital and later released.
The incident quickly went viral and sparked widespread outrage, with many claiming that the police misused force against a minor.
Warren confirmed to The Hill earlier this month that several officers involved in the incident had been suspended. The suspensions were set to apply immediately and will continue at least during the course of an internal police review.
Elba Pope, the girl’s mother, said days after the cops ignored her during the incident, when she told them that her daughter was having a mental health crisis.
The Pope’s lawyers filed a formal notification of intent to sue the city for “emotional distress, aggression, aggression, excessive force, false imprisonment, false imprisonment,” according to The Washington Post.