The Rochester Police Department in New York on Thursday released extensive camera footage of the incident late last month in which a 9-year-old girl was spray-painted.
In the footage provided by the police department posted on YouTube, several of the nine officers who responded to a a family problem can be heard threatening the girl as they struggle to get her to end up in the back of a police car.
“Listen to me – you’ll be sprayed if you do not come in,” said one officer, according to the footage.
“Get in the car,” said another. “I’m already told you.”
“I’m going to spray you with pepper and do not want to,” said one officer. “Then sit back.”
“Please do not,” said the girl.
One of the officers finally sprayed the girl with pepper spray and locked the door when the girl shouted, ‘My eye is bleeding!’
“Officer,” she said between sobs to a female officer in the front of the car, “please don’t do this to me.”
The officer then replies, “You did it to yourself, hon.”
The 90-minute recording, significantly longer than the 11-minute video released shortly after the incident, was part of the city’s commitment to ‘be transparent and share all the information and videos regarding this incident’, Rochester , Mayor, Lovely Warren) said.
“I continue to share the community’s outrage for the treatment of this child,” Warren said. The New York Times.
Deputy Chief of Police Andre Anderson said during a press conference When the initial footage from police was released, officers said the girl “indicated that she wanted to kill herself and that she wanted to kill her mother.”
Anderson added that the girl then ran away from the house and was chased by an officer. Officers then tried to get the girl into a police vehicle for a few minutes because the girl refused to call her father, struggled and at one point kicked off a body camera of an officer before another sprayed her pepper .
Anderson said at the time that the child was taken to Rochester General Hospital and later released.
The incident quickly went viral and caused great outrage, with many claiming that the police had improperly used violence against a minor.
Warren confirmed to The Hill earlier this month that several officers were involved in the incident was suspended. The suspensions would apply immediately and would continue at least during the internal police review.
Elba Pope, the girl’s mother, said days later officers ignored her during the incident when she told that her daughter was having a mental health crisis.
Attorneys for Pope have filed a formal notice of intent to sue the city for “emotional distress, assault, battery, excessive violence, false arrest, false imprisonment,” according to The Washington Post.