The Rochester Police Dept. is getting criticism nationwide after releasing body cam footage showing several officers, unmasked, taking a 9-year old girl to the ground, handcuffing her, placing her inside a police vehicle, and pepper spraying her when she refused to place her feet inside the car.
Responding to a call of “family trouble” and a possible stolen vehicle, nine officers arrived at a family home and were told the child had said she wanted to kill herself and her mother, CNN reports. In the video she can be heard crying for her father.
The Rochester Police Dept. issued a statement that further inflamed outrage, claiming multiple times officers’ actions were “required.”
Police officers “tried to put the girl in the back of a patrol car, at which point she pulled away and kicked at them,” the Democrat & Chronicle reports. The paper also included the body cam videos, which are disturbing. “In a statement Saturday, they said this action ‘required’ an officer to take the girl down to the ground. Then, they said, ‘for the minor’s safety and at the request of the custodial parent on scene,’ the child was handcuffed and put in the back of a police car.”
After the 9-year old “disobeyed multiple commands to put her feet in the car,” the paper, citing the RPD statement, adds, a “Rochester police officer was then ‘required’ to spray an ‘irritant’ in the handcuffed girl’s face, the department said Saturday.”
CNN reports that “in the video, a female officer is seen talking to the girl, eventually saying, ‘This is your last chance, otherwise pepper spray’s going in your eyeballs.’ About a minute later, another officer can be heard saying, ‘Just spray her at this point.’ The female officer is seen shaking a can that appears to be pepper spray and the child continues to scream.”
The young child was clearly in distress, as the body cam footage shows.
Some responses via social media: