A 9-year-old girl sat handcuffed in the backseat of a police car, distraught and crying for her father as the Rochester police officers grew increasingly impatient while they tried to wrangle her fully into the vehicle.
Shortly before Rochester police used pepper spray on a handcuffed 9-year-old girl, an officer chided her by saying she was “acting like a child.”
“I am a child,” the girl replied.
The girl begged “please don’t do this to me” and said “it burns” as she waited handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser for 16 minutes. In response, the officer says: “You did it to yourself, hon.”
The incident took place when Rochester police department personnel were called to the girl’s house on Avenue B Friday afternoon for a complex situation involving a possible stolen vehicle. The girl’s mother told police she was afraid the girl would hurt herself or someone else and requested that she be handcuffed, according to police.
Initially an officer asked: “What is going on? How can I help?”, but the arrival of the girl’s mother agitated her and she repeatedly cried out for her father. The weather was frigid and officers expressed concern about the child getting hypothermic at several points, the video shows.
One attending female officer attempted to connect with the child by finding out her name and did tell her she would go find her father, who was not at the scene.
After a protracted period where police unsuccessfully tried to get the now handcuffed child’s feet wholly inside a police vehicle and shut the passenger door, an attending officer said “Just spray her at this point.”
After the bodycam footage was out, the city of Rochester suspended police officers seen in an initial video from the 29 January detainment spraying a pepper in the face of the distraught and handcuffed child. Mayor Lovely Warren said the city released almost 90 minutes of additional video in order to be transparent.
In fact, the city leaders demanding answers for how a family disturbance call quickly escalated into a use of force against a young girl in obvious distress.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old to have to be pepper-sprayed is okay,” said Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan at a news conference on Sunday.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren added that as a mother of a 10-year-old daughter, the video “is not anything you want to see.”
More details of this disturbing incident from AWM:
Now, the girl’s mother, Elba Pope, has hired an attorney. It is not clear if she has yet seen the damning body camera footage. Nevertheless, a little girl was unnecessarily hurt by a police officer.
Throughout the ordeal, the girl begs for medical help. She asks for an ambulance to come so they can remove the painful product from her eyes. She also asks if she can have her handcuffs temporarily removed so she can wipe away the pepper-spray before it drips into her mouth.
“If you stick your head towards the window, the cold air is going to feel nice,” an officer tells the traumatized girl, indicating that she should stick her head out of the window like a dog.
“It’s burning too bad,” the girl said.
“It’s supposed to burn. It’s called pepper spray,” the officer fires back.
In response, another officer said: “Holy Toledo, that was crazy.”
When the ambulance does arrive, the victim is rushed to Rochester General Hospital. She was later released from the hospital and returned to her family.
Watch the video below for more details:
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These asshole cops need to be fired on the spot period.
She should be personally sued and the city should be held accountable and responsible
For child abuse. If these cops have children the should be removed from them for child abuse. All officials need to be investigated.
Pepper spray is a bit much, but a Mayor with the name “Lovely” says a lot. (DEI). Let’s get the “mother” in here and answering why she felt that the cops needed to treat her daughter as a “dangerous” individual who needed to be restrained. The child was calling for her father (which perhaps tells something about her situation with her mother). There definitely needs to be a complete investigation BEFORE Mayor “Lovely” Warren and others, jump on the “hating cops” bus.