(Reuters) – Police officers in Rochester, New York, came under investigation again on Monday after the release of body-camera footage showed officers handcuffing and pepper-spraying a 9-year-old girl.
Officers said they were responding to a family disturbance call on Friday, and video taken during the incident showed police wrestling the girl to the ground in the snow.
“You’re acting like a child,” an officer tells her.
“I am a child,” the girl, who appears to be Black, says as she screams, crying for her father.
The investigation comes months after Rochester was rocked by protests in the wake of a Black man suffocating and dying last year after city police put a hood over his head.
An inquiry concluded that seven officers involved in the death of Daniel Prude, 41, acted within department policy and ethical standards.
In Friday’s incident, police were responding to a 911 call reporting “family trouble,” Rochester Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson told reporters. He said the girl “indicated she wanted to kill herself and she wanted to kill her mom.”
After the girl tried to run away, officers handcuffed her and attempted to take her to a hospital in the patrol car, Anderson said.
Screaming “I want my dad!” she resisted their efforts to get her into the patrol car, the video showed.
“This is your last chance. Otherwise pepper spray is going into your eyeballs,” an officer tells her, adding, “I will call your dad.”
Eventually, another officer says, “Just spray her at this point.”
The girl screams. She pleads, “Wipe my eyes, please!”
“Unbelievable,” the officer sighs.
The girl’s identity was not released and the video was blurred to provide anonymity. A representative for the child’s family could not be immediately identified.
After Prude’s death, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren fired the police chief, La’Ron Singletary, and named Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan as the first woman to run the department.
Video footage, released by Prude’s family, showed officers using a mesh hood and pinning him to the pavement, in a scene reminiscent of George Floyd’s May 25 death in Minneapolis police custody that sparked worldwide anti-racism protests.
(Reporting by Barbara Goldberg in New York; Editing by Frank McGurty and Aurora Ellis)
