A 9-year-old girl in Rochester, ill-trained police and the need in all cities for more community help
Column: A 9-year-old girl in Rochester, ill-trained police and the need in all cities for more community help
Rochester, again?
The video-recorded pepper-spraying of a screaming, handcuffed 9-year-old Black girl by police last week has gone viral, and it’s painful to watch.
It is even more painful when we recall another video released last fall of a mentally ill Black man dying naked in the street after Rochester, New York, police put a hood over his head.
Our outrage following both of these scandalous tragedies is further inflamed by frustration. Both incidents should remind us that in the tension between the need for law enforcement and police accountability, there are no easy solutions. But there are solutions.
After video of the death of Daniel Prude, who was visiting from Chicago, stirred protests and a national uproar, Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren fired the police chief. The city also launched a new “Person in Crisis” team of counselors and social workers to answer emergency calls for people “experiencing emotional or behavioral turmoil.”
The program is burdened by potential miscommunication, though. It requires a caller to call 911 to request mental health services for themselves or call 211, the area’s crisis hotline number, to seek help for someone else.
Unfortunately, as a city spokesman told reporters, the call Friday for the little girl came in as a “domestic” or “family trouble” crime report, not a mental health call, which would have been directed to the crisis team counselors.
As a result, police were called to the scene. As depicted in widely viewed footage posted to YouTube, chaos ensued. The girl, who was not identified, is seen screaming to be let go as police restrain her in a patrol car. When an officer tells her she’s “acting like a child,” she responds, “I am a child.” Moments later, the video shows an officer pepper-spraying the girl and leaving her crying in the back seat.
Mayor Warren announced on Monday that the officers involved in the spraying would be suspended, pending an internal investigation. But, as in the case of Prude, the officers appeared to be ill-prepared for what they encountered.
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