The Mayor of Rochester, New York, Lovely Warren, has ordered the suspension of the officers involved in an incident where a 9-year-old Black girl was handcuffed, and then pepper-sprayed.
Body camera video shows the little girl crying and screaming for her father as officers restrain her. After hand-cuffing her, the officers insist she get into the back of the police car. The girl continues crying, sounding terrified, and shouting repeatedly, "I want my dad!"
WARNING: Caution, this video is extremely disturbing.
At a news conference Sunday, Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan declined to defend the officers' actions.
"I'm not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old to have to be pepper-sprayed is OK. It's not," Herriott-Sullivan said according to Fox 11 Los Angeles. "I don't see that as who we are as a department, and we're going to do the work we have to do to ensure that these kinds of things don't happen."
Also at the news conference Sunday was Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson, who described the girl as suicidal. Police say they were responding to a family disturbance.
"She indicated she wanted to kill herself and she wanted to kill her mom," he said.
Rochester police department released a statement saying the actions were taken "for the minor's safety and at the request of the custodial parent on scene," and that an officer was “required” to spray an “irritant” in the handcuffed 9-year-old’s face because the little girl did not obey commands.
The girl was taken to Rochester General Hospital, "where she received the services and care that she needed," according to police.
Last year, the Rochester police department was under investigation after the death of Daniel Prude, a 41-year-old African American man.
Prude was fatally injured after being physically restrained by Rochester police officers. He was suffering from a mental health episode after taking PCP and was found by police walking naked in the street. Officers placed a “spit hood” over his head, held him face down on the pavement for two minutes and fifteen seconds, and he stopped breathing. Prude later died of complications from asphyxia after being taken off life support. The autopsy report ruled Prude's death a homicide and also included the contributing factors to his death as "excited delirium and acute intoxication by phencyclidine, or PCP."
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