Elba Pope in Rochester, NY, a woman whose nine-year-old daughter was handcuffed and pepper sprayed by the police this week, said she told police that her daughter was having a mental health crisis, but was ignored.
Pope said he told officers that his daughter was having a nervous breakdown and begged them to bring in a trained specialist instead of stopping her, but that they refused, according to The Washington Post. Mayor Lovely Warren (D) said on Monday that three police officers would be suspended in connection with the incident.
The Pope’s lawyers filed a formal notification of their intention to sue the city for “emotional suffering, aggression, aggression, excessive force, false detention, false imprisonment,” according to the newspaper. Body camera footage shows Pope’s daughter crying as the police try to force her, handcuffed, into a car.
Pope said he initially called the police to file a report on the possible theft of his car, but that his daughter ran away from home crying when they arrived. She said her daughter had a similar crisis in November, requiring her to be evaluated at a hospital under state law, and that she could immediately say that a mental health specialist was needed.
“It turns out that she chose that moment to run out of the house, and I said, ‘Oh, my God, here we go,” said Pope. “I had to call the policeman and say, ‘Sir, I know my daughter and she is about to have a mental health problem, can you contact someone?’
Lorenzo Napolitano, the Pope’s lawyer, noted that Rochester police were involved in a similar response to a mental health crisis last March.
Daniel T. Prude, a black man who had run naked down the street in the midst of a mental health episode, was put on a “spit hood” to keep body fluids away from the police, who then pressed his face on the sidewalk for at least two minutes. Prude died on March 30 after he was removed from the life support device.
“This is not the first incident in which the Rochester police have dealt poorly with people who have had a mental health crisis. . . and [Pope] I would love to see change, ”said Napolitano, according to the newspaper.