Newly released body camera videos show Rochester law enforcement officers spraying pepper at a 9-year-old girl in upstate New York.
Footage from a video recorded during a family dispute on Friday shows the troubled young woman fleeing the police and falling to the snow-covered ground as a policeman tries to bring her back.
“I want my dad,” the girl screams in a second video. “I’m not going anywhere. I want my dad … I won’t get in the car until I see my dad. “
“Stop,” says an officer.
“Wait, I can just get the snow off me,” she shouts. “I want my dad. Wait, I just want to see my dad, please. For the last time…. I demand.”
“Stop or you’re going to get hurt,” replies a police officer at one point during the long ordeal.
A police officer is overheard telling the girl that she will find her father, but asks her to get into the police car to warm up – just so that the girl starts screaming again.
“Just spray it right now,” a police officer finally says, and is seen spraying the girl.
“Please clean my eyes,” the girl screams. “Clean my eyes, please.”
The footage was released on Sunday after a news conference in the city, during which Rochester deputy police chief Andre Anderson said the girl was suicidal.
“She indicated that she wanted to kill herself and wanted to kill her mother,” he said, according to a report in Democrat & Chronicle.
Nine police cars responded to the call, the police said.
The girl’s mother, who was also not identified, is seen in the footage arguing with her daughter, who gets more and more agitated while the mother scolds her.
The woman is also seen cursing at passing drivers.
“I’m not going to stay here and say that for a 9-year-old child to have to be sprayed with pepper is okay,” said police chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan on Sunday. “It is not.”
“I don’t see it as who we are as a department,” said the boss. “And we’re going to do the work that we have to do to make sure that kind of thing doesn’t happen.”
Rochester’s Mayor Lovely Warren said she was disturbed by the video.
“I am very concerned about how this young woman was treated by our police department,” Warren said during the press conference. “The video makes it clear that we need to do more for our children and families.”