Furore after police use pepper spray on mother
Woman accused of shoplifting knocked to the ground in front of her daughter
ARochester, New York, police officer tackled and used pepper spray on a woman who had been accused of shoplifting and was with her young daughter last month, according to police body camera videos of the episode that were released on Friday.
The videos of the woman’s arrest threatened to further tarnish the reputation of the police department, which is already under fire for handcuffing and using a chemical irritant on a 9-year-old girl in January and for the death of Daniel Prude, a Black man who died after officers put a hood over his head and pressed his head to the pavement.
Employees at a Rite Aid pharmacy called police about 4.30pm that day after the woman refused to leave the store and knocked items to the floor. The body camera video shows officers stopping the woman, who is holding her toddler, outside the store.
“Did you steal from that store?” an officer asks the woman. The woman can be seen putting her daughter down and opening her purse to show the contents to the officer. The officer demands that she wait while he speaks to store employees, but she runs across the street, gripping her child’s hand.
Caught on camera
The officer catches her and knocks her to the ground as the child begins to scream. A second officer arrives and carries the child several feet away. The woman gets to her feet and tries to grab the girl.
Then, footage from a nearby security camera shows, the first officer spraying the woman in the face with pepper spray before taking her to the ground again and putting her in handcuffs.