The Rochester Police Accountability Board has released a video showing an officer violently throwing a mother to the ground and pushing her 3-year-old after a store accused the mother of theft.
The incident has sparked outrage considering it comes just weeks after Rochester police officers were seen on camera attacking, handcuffing and pepper-spraying a 9-year-old girl, as Blavity previously reported.
According to the Rochester Police Accountability Board, the Feb. 22 incident involved an unnamed mother who is seen on camera walking down a snowy road with her young daughter. The body camera footage shows a police officer stop her and ask about a local store owner who accused her of taking something.
The mother denies that she stole anything and shows the officer the inside of her bag, eventually letting him search through it himself.
The officer doesn't find any stolen items but says he has to check with the store owner to know exactly what the accusations were. He asks the woman to sit in the back of his police vehicle while he calls.
“If you didn’t steal, you’re out of here, but you have to stay with me,” the officer said.
The mother refuses and begins to quickly walk away. The officer chases her down and begins to attack her, even as she held her 3-year-old daughter in her arms.
As the child screams in fear, the officer pushes the 3-year-old to the side and pepper-sprays the mother. The 3-year-old refuses to leave her mother's side until another officer arrives and pulls the little girl away while the first officer throws the mother to the ground and handcuffs her.
In another video shared by the Rochester Police Accountability Board, an officer can be heard asking police nearby to pull their cars in front of him so people can't see him detaining the crying 3-year-old.
“It doesn’t look good that I have to restrain, like, a three-year-old,” he said.
During a press conference on Friday, members of the Rochester Police Accountability Board said the video showed unacceptable conduct by the officers.
“It should have stopped. It was the officers’ actions from then on that escalated the situation, clearly putting the mother and child in stress,” board member Arlene Brown said.
Board chair Shani Wilson also revealed that two of the officers seen on camera in the most recent incident were also involved in the handcuffing and pepper-spraying of the 9-year-old earlier this year.
“We would hope that the supervisors of these officers would have recognized after the first incident that perhaps their behavior shows they have some more training or some more work to do before being in a situation like this again in a few weeks,” the Rev. Matthew Nickoloff, a board member, said.
In a statement to The Appeal, Rochester City Councilmember Mary Lupien did not hold back in her criticism of the police department and the damage they did to both the mother and child during the incident.
“The only offense I saw is that the young woman was tackled to the ground by officers and pepper-sprayed while desperately trying to keep hold of her daughter. The trauma inflicted on this little girl and her mother will be a permanent scar and will ripple out into the community for years to come,” Lupien said.
“I’m calling for the complete dissolution of the Rochester Police Department and reformation with a mission to provide peacekeepers to serve our community,” she added.
The incident is yet another during a turbulent year for the Rochester Police Department. Last summer, they faced criticism for the killing of Daniel Prude, who died after officers put a bag over his head and pushed his head into the concrete, as Blavity previously reported.
Officers were also under fire for handcuffing a 10-year-old during a traffic stop in May.
