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<\/p>\nA nine-year-old Black girl\u00a0pepper sprayed by police\u00a0begged \u201cplease don\u2019t do this to me\u201d and said \u201cit burns\u201d as she waited handcuffed in the back seat of a police cruiser for 16 minutes, according to new police body camera footage released on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The city of Rochester suspended police officers seen in an initial video from the 29 January detainment spraying a chemical irritant in the face of the distraught and handcuffed child. Mayor Lovely Warren said the city released almost 90 minutes of additional video in order to be transparent.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the video, the girl can be heard wailing and whimpering that she wants her dad and saying her eyes are burning as an officer tells her an ambulance is on its way but has been slowed by the snowy roads.<\/p>\n
\u201cOfficer, please don\u2019t do this to me,\u201d she says at one point.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did it to yourself, hon,\u201d the officer responds.<\/p>\n
An attorney for the girl\u2019s mother could not immediately be reached to comment on whether she had seen the new video.<\/p>\n
The girl asks multiple times when the ambulance will come to clean the pepper spray from her eyes and begs to have the handcuffs removed as the liquid runs into her mouth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you stick your head towards the window the cold air is going to feel nice,\u201d an officer tells her as the wait stretches on.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s burning too bad,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s supposed to burn. It\u2019s called pepper spray,\u201d she is told.<\/p>\n
The girl\u2019s mother, Elba Pope, said she had called police during an argument with her spouse, but asked officers to call mental health services when it became clear her fourth-grade daughter was headed for a meltdown.<\/p>\n
Video shows officers restraining and scolding the screaming girl, telling her they are losing patience as they struggle in the snow to put her in the back of a police cruiser.<\/p>\n
The officers are suspended pending the completion of an investigation. Warren said she had asked the police chief, Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan, to complete it quickly.<\/p>\n
Pope has filed a notice of claim, preserving her right to sue.<\/p>\n
Andrew Cuomo, the governor of\u00a0New York, said the new videos released on Thursday were \u201ceven more shocking and disturbing\u201d than the earlier video .<\/p>\n
\u201cNew Yorkers in every corner of the state are sickened by these actions and as a father of three daughters, I\u2019m furious,\u201d Cuomo said in a prepared release.<\/p>\n
The harsh treatment of the girl came as Rochester police are under scrutiny for the\u00a0death of Daniel Prude\u00a0last spring. Police handcuffed Prude, placed a hood on his head and pressed him to the ground until he stopped breathing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A nine-year-old Black girl\u00a0pepper sprayed by police\u00a0begged \u201cplease don\u2019t do this to me\u201d and said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"yoast_head":"\n