Rochester police released two videos with police body cameras arresting a distraught 9-year-old girl who was handcuffed and sprayed with what the police called a “chemical irritant”.
ROCHESTER, NY – Rochester police released two videos of police body cameras on Sunday arresting a distraught 9-year-old girl who was handcuffed and sprayed with what the police called a “chemical irritant”.
Democrat and Chronicle reported that, prior to the release of the videos, Rochester’s mayor, Lovely Warren, expressed her concern for the “child who was harmed during the incident that happened on Friday”.
“I have a 10 year old daughter, so she is a child, she is a baby. This video, as a mother, is nothing you want to see, “continued Warren.
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 note on Saturday, the police department said the action “required” a policeman to topple the girl. Then the department said, “for the safety of the child and at the request of the parent with custody at the scene,” the child was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police car while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
Police said the girl disobeyed orders to put her feet in the car. A police officer was then “forced” to spray an “irritant” 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 am not going to stay here and say that for a 9 year old child to have to be sprayed with pepper is okay. It is 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 make sure that kind of thing doesn’t 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.
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.