Recently released bodycam videos show Rochester police officers spraying peppers on a 9-year-old girl in New York City.
Images from a video shot during a family dispute on Friday show the bewildered young man running away from police and then falling to the ground covered in snow as a police officer tries to retrieve her.
“I want my dad,” the girl shouts in a second video. “I am not going anywhere. I want my dad … not to get in a car until he sees my dad. “
“Stop,” one officer says.
“Wait, I can get the snow out,” he shouts. “I want my father. Wait, I just want to see my dad, please. Last time…. I demand. “
“Stop or you’ll get hurt,” one police officer replies at one point during the long test.
He hears an official woman tell the girl that she will find her father, but asks him to get inside the police car to stay warm, just so the girl starts screaming again.
“He just sprayed her right now,” one policeman finally says, and he sees the girl sprayed.
“Please dry my eyes,” the girl shouts. “Wipe my eyes, please.”
The images were released Sunday after a city press conference, during which Rochester Deputy Police Director Andre Anderson said the girl was suicidal.
“She indicated she wanted to kill herself and she wanted to kill her mother,” she said, according to a report published in Democrat & Chronicle.
Nine police cars answered the call, police said.
The girl’s mother, who was not identified either, is seen in the footage arguing with her daughter, who is increasingly agitated as her mother picks her up.
The woman is also seen cursing passing drivers.
“I’m not going to stay here and tell you that for a nine-year-old you’re going to have to make pepper, it’s okay,” police chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said Sunday. “It’s not.”
“I don’t see it as who we are as a department,” the chief said. “And we’re going to do the work that we have to do to make sure this kind of thing doesn’t happen.”
Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said she was upset by the video.
“I’m very concerned about how this young woman was treated by our police department,” Warren said during the press conference. “It’s clear from the video that we need to do more to support our children and families.”