Rochester police officers were reportedly suspended for their alleged involvement in a Friday incident, where a distraught 9-year-old girl was handcuffed and sprayed with pepper spray.
The announcement was made Monday by the city’s Communications Director, Justin Roj, at a news conference, the Democrat and Chronicle reported.
The officers involved in Friday’s incident were not identified. Their suspensions take effect immediately and will continue pending an internal investigation.
Rochester police on Sunday released two videos of police body cameras restricting and spraying with what the police called a “chemical irritant”.
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Democrat and Chronicle reported that before the videos were released, Rochester’s mayor, Lovely Warren, expressed her concern about the “child who was harmed during the incident that happened on Friday.”
“I have a 10 year old son, so she is a child, she is a baby. This video, as a mother, is nothing you want to see, ”Warren continued to say.
A total of nine officers and supervisors responded to the “family problems” report on Friday. The girl can be heard in the videos of police officers’ body cameras screaming desperately for her father as the police try to restrain her.
At a news conference on Sunday, deputy police chief Andre Anderson described the girl as suicidal.
“She indicated that she wanted to kill herself and wanted to kill her mother,” he said.
The police tried to force the girl into a patrol car, but she walked away and kicked them. In a statement on Saturday, the police department said the action “required” a policeman to topple the girl. The department then said, “for the safety of the minor and at the request of the custodial parent at the scene,” the child was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police car while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
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Police said the girl disobeyed orders to put her feet in the car. A police officer was then “forced” to spray an “irritating” spray on the handcuffed girl’s face, the department said on Saturday.
At Sunday’s press conference, police chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan described the irritant as pepper spray. She refused to defend the actions of the police.
“I’m not going to stay here and say that for a 9-year-old to have to be sprayed with pepper it’s okay. It’s not,” said Herriott-Sullivan. “I don’t see it as who we are as a department and we are going to do the work that we have to do to ensure that this type of thing does not happen.”
Police said the girl was eventually taken to Rochester General Hospital, “where she received the services and care she needed,” and was later released to her family.
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The Rochester Police Department has faced scrutiny since Daniel Prude’s death last year after police officers put a hood over his head and pressed his face against the sidewalk.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.