Police officers involved in the pepper spray of a 9-year-old girl in Rochester, New York, have been suspended, the city announced Monday. The suspensions take effect immediately and will in any case last until an internal police investigation has been completed.
“What happened Friday was just awful and rightly outraged our entire community,” Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren said in a statement. “Unfortunately, state law and union agreement prevent me from taking more direct and serious measures.”
Warren said she would “lead charges” to change these laws to “allow cities to take disciplinary action more quickly in cases like these.”
The agents were suspended with pay, on the condition that a suspension without pay could last no longer than 30 days without a completed internal investigation, reports CBS-affiliated WROC-TV. The city has not said how many officers have been suspended. Previous reports indicated that a total of nine officers and supervisors responded Friday to the report of “family problems.”
Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson said on Saturday that the girl threatened to kill herself and her mother. Rochester police said in a statement that officers tried to force the girl into a police car, but she tried to drive away and kicked at the officers. The department said it “required an officer to bring the minor to the ground.”
Once she was in the back of the car, police said the girl ignored multiple orders to put her feet in the car, and that an officer was “required” to spray her with a chemical irritant. In a body camera video released Sunday, before spraying the girl, an officer can be heard saying, “Just spray her at this point.”
The girl was eventually taken to a local hospital.
“I’m not going to stand here and tell you it’s okay for a 9-year-old to be sprayed with pepper spray. It’s not,” police chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said at a news conference on Sunday. “I don’t see that as who we are as a department and we’re going to do the work we have to do to make sure things like this don’t happen.”
According to WROC-TV, the police are conducting an internal investigation into the incident and the Rochester Police Accountability Board is also investigating.