Police officers involved in the pepper spray of a 9-year-old girl in Rochester, New York, have been suspended, the city announced Monday. The suspensions take effect immediately and will last at least until an internal police investigation is completed.
“What happened on Friday was simply horrific and rightly upset our entire community,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said in a statement. “Unfortunately, constitutional law and trade union contracts prevent me from taking more immediate and serious steps.”
Warren said she would “lead the charge” to change these laws to “allow cities to issue discipline faster in cases like this”.
The officers were suspended with pay, provided that a suspension without payment can last no longer than 30 days without a completed internal investigation, reports the WBS-TV subsidiary of CBS. The city did not say how many officers were suspended. Earlier reports indicated that a total of nine officers and supervisors responded to the report of ‘family problems’ on Friday.
Andre Anderson, deputy police chief, said on Saturday the girl was threatening to kill herself and her mother. Rochester police said in a statement officers tried to force the girl into a police vehicle, but she tried to pull away and kicked at officers. According to the department, an officer must take the minor to the ground. ‘
When she was in the back of the car, police said the girl ignored several orders to place her feet in the vehicle, and an officer had to inject a chemical irritation. In a camera-camera video that appeared Sunday, before the girl was sprayed, and an officer can be heard saying, “Just spray her at this point.”
The girl was eventually taken to a local hospital.
‘I’m not going to stand here and tell you that a 9-year-old pepper spray should be OK. It is not, ‘said Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan, chief of police, at a news conference on Sunday. “I do not see it as who we are as a department and we are going to do the work we have to do to ensure that these kinds of things do not happen.”
The police department is conducting an internal review of the incident, and Rochester’s Police Liability Board is also investigating, according to WROC-TV.