Photo: YouTube
Outrage is growing over the child abuse that a 9-year-old Black girl received by the hands of officers from the Rochester Police Department on Friday afternoon.
The 9-year-old was abused while officers were reportedly responding to a family disturbance. In a released bodycam video, the officers are seen handcuffing this Black child, putting her into a police car—and eventually pepper-spraying her.
Why this child was handcuffed and pepper-sprayed—besides being Black—is anyone’s guess.
At one point, a white female officer tells the child to put her feet into the cruiser as she sits in handcuffs. The officer then tells her “This is your last chance, otherwise pepper spray’s going in your eyeballs.” After this, a white male officer then says, “Just spray her at this point.”
This is happening as the kid repeatedly says she wants her dad. One officer actually told the 9-year-old “You’re acting like a child.” The girl responded “I am a child!”
This is the kind of brutal policing Black people—even children—face from American policing.
Some authority figures in Rochester have been forced to state the obvious: police should not be handcuffing and pepper-spraying kids.
Mayor Lovely Warren, who has a 10-year-old daughter, said, “I can tell you that this video, as a mother, is not anything that you want to see. This is not something that any of us should want to justify, can justify…And it is something we have to change.”
Mayor Warren also said, “What happened Friday was simply horrible, and has rightly outraged, all of our community.”
Even Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan couldn’t condone the conduct of these cops.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you that for a 9-year-old to have to be pepper-sprayed is OK. We’re going to do the work we have to do to ensure that these kinds of things don’t happen,” said Herriott-Sullivan.
But, not surprisingly, Rochester Police Union Chief Mike Mazzeo did what police union representatives always do: he excused this abominable conduct by cops.
“When it’s determined that she needs help, and there’s a mental hygiene, they have to be restrained,” Mazzeo said. “If that’s not going to be the policy then we need to change them, but they have to operate on what they have and what they can utilize.”
Mazzeo also said this: “Had they had to go and push further, and use more force, there’s a good chance she could have been hurt worse.” He added, “It’s very very difficult to get somebody into the back of a police car like that. And she’s 9 years old. Imagine what happens when we have a full grown individual.”
In other words, we should be glad police didn’t do further harm to this 9-year-old Black child than they did. Mazzeo never apparently explained if pepper-spraying a child is also part of police policy.
Protest against the Rochester Police’s abuse of this child are currently underway.
New York Attorney General Letitia James also tweeted the following Monday: “What happened in Rochester on Friday is deeply disturbing and wholly unacceptable. Such use of force and pepper spray should never be deployed against a child, period. My office is looking into what transpired, but it’s clear that drastic reform is needed at @RochesterNYPD.”
