“At the heart of this, we need to place the sanctity of human life at the center of the DPOs [Rochester Police Department] policing philosophy, “Mayor Lovely Warren said during a virtual press conference.
Warren did not specifically mention the January 29 incident involving the 9-year-old girl, but said it needs to be clear that police officers should not handcuff “under 12s, unless they pose an imminent danger to themselves or others” .
“The current draft does not specify imminent, however, my recommendation would be to change that,” said Warren.
Two videos of body cameras released by the Rochester police show police officers arresting the child, putting him in handcuffs and trying to put him inside the back of a police vehicle while she cried repeatedly and called her father.
After the girl failed to follow orders to put her feet in the car, the police are seen throwing pepper spray at her. The girl was transported to a local hospital, where she was later released, according to Rochester police.
The officers involved were suspended pending the results of an internal police investigation, the city announced on Monday.
Changing the culture of the police department
On thursday. Warren divided the recommendations into 10 categories: responsibility, community involvement and programming, data, technology and transparency, promotion of a community-oriented culture, officer welfare, police policy, strategies and practices, recruitment, resizing of the security department. police, response to mental health connections and training.
One of Warren’s most important recommendations is that the federal court update the city’s consent decree, which limits minority representation in the police department to 25%. The consent decree was put into effect in the late 1970s, when the city’s colored community represented just a quarter of the population, Warren said.
“Now, as we said before, people of color represent well over 50% of the population of the city of Rochester, so our consent decree should reflect that,” said Warren, adding that 87% of city officials are white, while only 47% of its population is white.
Warren also offered additional recommendations for police reform, such as petitioning the state to allow Rochester to immediately dismiss RPD personnel for improper practices, ban discriminatory application standards such as racial discrimination, reduce the size of the department in the next 5-10 years, and allocate resources to other programs and create a public security interview panel to evaluate candidates for the RPD.
Warren emphasized that this was a first draft of the recommendations, which will now be analyzed by City Council members and other community leaders for feedback. The council will vote on the measures in late March.
CNN’s Laura Ly, Eric Levenson and Travis Caldwell contributed to this report.