Police approached a black woman who suspected theft while her 3-year-old son watched, and then applied pepper spray to her face while she held her son, according to a video of the February 22 incident that authorities released on Friday. -market.
The arrest took place in Rochester, New York, after police responded to a report of an alleged thief in a Rite Aid, reported the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
In the footage from the body camera of the incident, a police officer can be heard interrogating the woman, asking what she “stole from that store” and saying “I don’t have time for nonsense, you better be quick with me”.
The woman denies stealing anything, opening her purse and showing it to the police, taking diapers and other items while saying, “I didn’t steal anything.”
The policeman then says that she needs to stay with him until they speak to the store staff, at which point the woman begins to run away with her son. The police quickly catch up with her, and she is heard repeatedly saying, “I didn’t do anything!”
The police then aggressively attack her on the floor to handcuff her, while her son can be heard screaming and crying “mommy, mommy”. The woman said to the police, “I didn’t steal anything!”
In the security footage of the prison, the woman is seen grabbing her son’s hand when she gets up, and a police officer sprinkles pepper on her face and tries to push her to the floor again while another police officer separates her from her son.
“That girl was fighting, damn it!” a police officer can be heard saying immediately after the arrest. He then argues out loud with a viewer who filmed the incident, saying he was not helping.
Body camera footage shows the child screaming in distress, and the police preventing the child from running to the police car where the woman was being held.
The woman’s son was not hit by pepper spray during the arrest, police said in a statement. demonstration. The police did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.
The police officer in the incident was placed on administrative duty pending an investigation, and the woman was accused of trespassing “when the store confirmed that she dropped several items off the shelf and refused repeated requests to leave,” said the Interim Police Chief. Cynthia Herriott. -Sullivan said supposedly.
Herriott-Sullivan suggested that the police adhere to the protocols, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported, but added: “Just because we can do certain things, should we?”
“If the person is physically resisting, you are generally safe with the use of pepper spray,” she said. “You just want to go as far as is necessary. You don’t want to go any further.”
In a statement obtained by Rochester City News, the mayor of Rochester, Lovely Warren, said the video of the incident was “disturbing”.
“When incidents like this occur, I am relieved to have ensured that body cameras are used by the police, so that we can see what is happening on our streets and hold police officers accountable,” said Warren.
The conduct of the Rochester police officers was widely criticized after several high-profile violent interactions that the police had with black residents. The February 22 incident occurred less than a month after Rochester law enforcement officers sprayed pepper spray on a 9-year-old girl and said she “did it for [her]self.”
In March 2020, a black man named Daniel Prude was arrested naked and handcuffed by Rochester police, who put a hood over his head and pinned his face to the floor for two minutes. Prude died of asphyxiation and his death only gained national attention after his family’s video released images of the violent incident.