Cops Pepper-Sprayed, Handcuffed 9-Year-Old Girl Begging for Her Dad: Body Cam
‘I AM A CHILD’
Screenshot via Rochester Police Department
Body cam footage released on Sunday shows Rochester police officers handcuffing, pepper-spraying, and putting a 9-year-old girl in the back of a police car, the Democrat and Chronicle reports. The girl can be heard repeatedly screaming for her father in the video, after which police officers handcuff her and shove her into the car. One officer can be heard telling her, “You’re acting like a child,” to which she responds, “I am a child, the fuck?” At a Sunday press conference, deputy police chief Andre Anderson said the girl “indicated she wanted to kill herself and she wanted to kill her mom.”
The city’s police force came under nationwide scrutiny last year after body camera footage was released of officers pressing the head of a Black man, Daniel Prude, into the pavement amid what they said was a psychotic episode. Prude died a week later, but it took months for the footage to be made public. “I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old to have to be pepper-sprayed is OK,” Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said Sunday. “It’s not. I don’t see that as who we are as a department.”