The weather was well below freezing and there was snow on the ground when a nine-year-old Black girl, dressed in leggings and a hoodie, asked the Rochester police officers trying to force her into the backseat of a squad car if they could at least brush her off.
“Can you please get the snow off of me? It’s cold,” she said.
“You had your chance,” replies one of the officers. “Get in the car, now!” shouts another.
Officers were responding to a 911 call reporting “family trouble” that snowy Friday. The nine-year-old, who hasn’t been named since she’s a minor, “indicated that she wanted to kill herself, and she wanted to kill her mom,” according to the city’s Deputy Police Chief Andre Anderson. During her tormented encounter with the police, which was captured on an officer’s body camera, the girl tried running away from the officers and kept screaming that she wanted her dad.
Soon, she was handcuffed and screaming for the police to stop trying to restrain her. She kept saying she wanted to see her dad and, in her distress, kicked at the officers.
She received no compassion from the officers despite being a child in a bout of extreme emotional distress. Eventually, one officer said: “Just spray her at this point.” Another scream as the nine-year-old was sprayed in the face with an irritant, intentionally causing her severe pain, and put in the backseat of the squad car.
“Unbelievable,” one officer said.
The casual brutality is shocking but familiar. The country has seen police do this to Black girls, in video, over and over. In June 2015, 15-year-old Dajerria Becton was abused by a police officer at a pool party in McKinney, Texas. That October, a teenage girl who was flipped out of her desk and dragged across the classroom by a school resource officer in South Carolina. In May 2020, 10-year-old Na’ilah Bey was handcuffed by Rochester police during a traffic stop. And, last week, 16-year-old Taylor Bracey was body slammed by an Orlando cop.
None of those girls did anything that could even begin to justify the abuse they received. Adults often excuse their egregious actions toward Black children by leaning into stereotypes that Black kids, especially girls, are defiant, unruly, and “bad.” In their minds, these kids have to be reeled in and the only way to do that is with force. Black children are seen as older, nefarious, and inherently violent. They are afforded no innocence or understanding. Often, they are blamed for the violence inflicted upon them. None of the officers who responded to that 911 call in Rochester, at least none on video, thought to meet a screaming child with compassion or anything other than pulling at her arms, throwing her into the snow in 17 degree weather, and spraying her in the face with an irritant.
There’s even a moment in the video when an officer scolds the girl for “acting like a child.”
“I am a child,” she replied.
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