Police tackled a black woman they suspected of shoplifting while her 3-year-old was watching, then sprayed her with pepper while holding her toddler, according to video footage of the February 22 incident released by officials Friday. has.
The arrest took place in Rochester, New York, after police responded to a report of a suspected shoplifter at a Rite Aid, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported.
In the camera footage of the incident, a police officer can be heard questioning the woman, who asks her what she “stole from that store” and tells her: “I do not have time for BS, you must be with me quickly . “
The woman denies stealing anything from the store, opening her wallet and showing it to the officer, taking out diapers and other items while saying, “I did not steal anything.”
The officer then tells her to stay with him until they talk to the store staff, and then the woman starts running away with her toddler. The police catch up with her quickly, and she is repeatedly heard saying, “I did nothing!”
The police then aggressively grab her on the ground to handcuff her, because her child can be heard screaming and crying ‘mum, mum’. The woman is heard saying to the officers, “I did not steal anything!”
Security footage of the arrest shows the woman grabbing her child’s hand as she gets up, and an officer squirts her in the face and tries to push her back to the ground while another officer separates her grip on her toddler.
“That chick told a fight, holy smoke!” an officer can be heard immediately after the arrest. He then argued loudly with a bystander who filmed the incident and said he was not helping.
The body material shows the child screaming in distress, and the police preventing the child from running to the police car where the woman was detained.
The woman’s toddler was not beaten with pepper spray during the arrest, police said in a statement. Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.
The officer in the incident was placed on administrative duty pending an investigation, and the woman was charged with trespassing ‘because the store confirmed she had knocked a number of items off the shelf and refused repeated requests to leave, said Interim Police Chief Cynthia Herriott. -Sullivan apparently said.
Herriott-Sullivan suggested that police adhere to protocols, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reported, but added: “Just because we can do certain things, right?”
“If the person physically resists, you are generally safe with pepper spray uses,” she said. “You just want to go to the extent necessary. You do not want to go beyond that.”
In a statement by Rochester City News, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said the video of the incident was “disturbing”.
“If such incidents occur, I am relieved that I have made sure that cameras are worn by bodyguards by our police so that we can see what is happening in our streets and hold officers accountable,” Warren said.
The actions of Rochester police officers have been widely criticized for several sensational, violent interactions the police have had with black residents. The February 22 incident came less than a month after Rochester police officers spray-painted a 9-year-old girl with pepper spray and told her she did it to [her]self. ‘
In March 2020, a black man named Daniel Prude was detained naked and handcuffed by Rochester police, who put a hood over his head and pinned his face to the ground for two minutes. Prude died of suffocation, and his death only received national attention after his family video released footage of the violent incident.