Unbelievable, indefensible

Rochester, N.Y., police became the object of national opprobrium last year after videos surfaced showing the brutal treatment of a Black man who had been suffering from a psychotic episode. In the aftermath, the police chief and the entire command staff were fired or resigned, and reforms were said to have been put in place. It is clear, though, that a whole lot of lessons were not learned. How else to explain the phalanx of police officers who handcuffed and pepper-sprayed a 9-year-old girl?

Police body-camera footage of the Jan. 29 event shows officers, who had responded to a family disturbance call, restraining the girl, pushing her into the snow to handcuff her and pepper-spraying her when she refused to sit inside the patrol car. The girl, who is Black, screamed repeatedly for her father and at one point an officer said, “You’re acting like a child” to which she said, “I am a child.”

Release of the body-cam video, which to the city’s credit came 48 hours after the incident and not months later as occurred when Daniel Prude died from complications of asphyxia, sparked outrage, suspension of the officers involved pending investigation and introduction of legislation that would ban use of pepper spray on children. OK. But how can it require a state law to make clear that it is not acceptable to pepper-spray children? Even after the event, a police union official was trying to justify the officers’ actions.

The problem is that police did not view this little Black girl as a child. She was clearly in trouble. She posed no danger. She needed to be calmed and helped, not handcuffed and pepper-sprayed. One has to ask—even as the answer is clear—if police would have handled the situation differently if the 9-year-old had been white and blond.

Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said watching the video reminded her of her own 10-year-old daughter. “I can tell you that this video, as a mother, is not anything that you want to see,” said Warren. It is not anything that any of us, as Americans, should have to see.