Two body videos of the incident released by the police department on Sunday show officers restraining the child, handcuffing her and trying to get her in the back of a police vehicle while she repeatedly heard crying and calling to her father.
Officers are seen spraying the girl with peppers after she did not follow the instructions to put her feet in the car.
The girl was transported to Rochester General Hospital where she was later released, Anderson said.
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren told a news conference on Sunday that she had spoken to the girl’s mother and that the person’s mental health team Person in Crisis would reach out to the family.
“It’s clear from the video that we need to do more to support our children and families,” Warren said
Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said at the press conference that what happened was not acceptable.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that it’s okay to spray a 9 – year – old pepper. It is not,” Herriott-Sullivan said. “I do not see it as who we are as a department, and we are going to do the work we need to do to ensure that these kinds of things do not happen.”
Police say they are responding to a report of ‘family problems’
Officers were called to a home on the afternoon of Jan. 29 for a report of “family problems,” Anderson said Sunday.
The officers were told that the girl was ‘suicide’ and that she ‘indicated that she wanted to kill herself and that she wanted to kill her mother’, the deputy principal explained.
The girl tried to flee from officers, Anderson said, and the video released by police shows an officer chasing her and trying to provide assistance.
After that, he said, her mother showed up and in the video from the body camera, the two are seen arguing.
Anderson said officers then decided to remove the child from the situation and transport her to a hospital.
But the girl refused to get into a police vehicle, “turned around” and kicked an officer and, according to Anderson, knocked over his body camera.
“It did not seem like she was resisting the officers, but trying not to be restrained from going to the hospital,” Anderson said. “As officers made numerous attempts to get her into the car, an officer sprayed the young child with OC spray to get her into the car.”
The body camera video shows the girl repeatedly crying to her father while being physically restrained by officers. She is seen screaming before her head is held against the snow-covered ground and handcuffed. A fight ensues between the girl and officers as they try to get her in the back of a police vehicle.
At one point, one officer says, “You are acting like a child,” to which the girl can hear responding, “I am a child!”
Later in the video, a female officer is seen talking to the girl and finally saying, “This is your last chance, otherwise pepper spray will go into 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 is apparently pepper spray and the child continues to scream.
The officers involved in the incident were not identified by police, nor was the child or her mother.
Anderson said on Sunday that he was “making no apologies for what happened” and that the department was “looking at a culture change”. According to Anderson, the department is reviewing many policies and making changes.
Mayor Warren said she had instructed the police chief to conduct a full and thorough investigation into the incident, and said she welcomed the review of what happened through the city’s police liability board.
The mayor explained that the video reminds her of her own young daughter.
“I have a 10-year-old daughter. So she’s a child; she’s a baby. And I can tell you that this video as a mother is nothing you want to see. It’s not,” Warren said. . “We need to understand compassion, empathy. If you have a child who suffers so much and cries out to her father, I see my baby’s face in her face.”