It seems like since 2020, we’ve seen more police brutality than we can fathom. New York police arrested and pepper sprayed a woman with her three year old baby. It seems like police force is continuously under the misguided conception that it is cromulent to bully citizens under the guise of a gun and a badge.
A statement from the Rochester Police department was made on February 22. Officers responded to a call of an alleged female shoplifter ” who was arguing with RiteAid store employees and refusing to leave”.
WTH Happened
Body camera video shows an officer talking to a woman with her child while she shows the contents of her purse, pulling out a loose diaper and saying she didn’t take anything from the convenience store.
The officer tells the woman he is going to confirm with store employees. He informs her she will have to stay with him, but she takes off running with her child. PD caught her outside of MoJoe’s Take Out, across the street. At this point, she was separated from her child, and forcibly taken to the ground. With a blurred out face in the video, the child is heard screaming and crying. Body cam shows a pull and tug, as the woman attempts to get up and grab her child. But the police pepper sprayed her just before screaming, “I did not steal anything!”
Thoughts of RPD
Although the child was not pepper sprayed, officials are worried she could have been exposed. The child’s welfare certainly would have been in question. Let’s not forget that police are supposed to protect and serve.
Interim Rochester Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan said in a statement Friday, “You’ll see where the mother and the child are actually grasping each other”.
“These disturbing incidents prove that RPD needs to fundamentally change it’s organizational culture”, read a statement from the city’s Police Accountability Board. “These incidents also affirm our community’s call to fundamentally reimagine public safety”.