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Rochester, New York – Rochester Police on Sunday released two body camera videos showing officers holding a distraught 9-year-old girl who was handcuffed and sprayed with what police called a chemical “irritant”.
The Democrat and Chronicle reported that before the videos were released, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren expressed concern for “the child who was injured in this incident on Friday.”
“I have a 10-year-old child, so she’s a child, she’s a baby. This video, as a mother, is not something you want to see, ”Warren continued.
Warren told a press conference on Sunday that she spoke to the mother of the girl “from mother to mother,” reports WROC-TV, a CBS Rochester affiliate.
She told reporters she was “very concerned with the way this young girl was treated by our police department,” the station added.
A total of nine officers and supervisors responded to the “family issues” report on Friday. The young girl can be heard in body camera videos of officers at the scene frantically screaming for her father as officers attempt to restrain her.
At Sunday’s press conference, Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson described the girl as suicidal.
“She indicated that she wanted to kill herself and that she wanted to kill her mother,” he said.
Officers tried to force the girl into a patrol car, but she pulled away and kicked them. In a statement on Saturday, the police department said the action “forced” a police officer to take the girl to the ground. Then, the ministry 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 of a police car as they waited for the child. arrival of an ambulance.
Police said the girl disobeyed orders to put her feet in the car. An officer was then “forced” to spray an “irritant” on the face of the handcuffed girl, the department said on Saturday.
An officer can be heard on the video released by WROC saying, “Just spray her at this point.”
She heard screams and an officer said, “I got it. I got it.”
At Sunday’s press conference, Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan described the irritant as pepper spray. She refused to defend the actions of the officers.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old it’s okay to get pepper sprayed. It’s not,” Herriott-Sullivan said. “I don’t see this for what we are as a department, and we’re going to do the work that we need to do to make sure that stuff 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 subsequently returned to her family.
The Rochester Police Department has come under intense scrutiny since Daniel Prude’s death last year after officers from the department put a hood over his head and smash his face against the sidewalk.
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