Rochester police officer off streets after pepper-spraying woman with toddler

A police officer in Rochester, New York has been placed on administrative duty after using pepper spray on a woman suspected of shoplifting who tried to escape with her three-year-old child in her arms, authorities said on Friday.

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Video of the 22 February incident was made public at a time when the Rochester police department is under intense scrutiny over interactions with Black residents, including the death last spring of Daniel Prude.

Prude, a 44-year-old African American man, died after officers put him in a hood and held naked on a freezing street. Authorities said last month the officers involved will not face charges.

Body camera video of the latest encounter showed the woman, who is Black, running from a white officer who had stopped her in the street and told her she had been accused of stealing from a convenience store.

The officer chased the woman down the sidewalk, then struggled to subdue her while trying not to injure the screaming toddler. Another officer arrived and carried the child several yards away. A statement from police said the woman was pepper-sprayed during the arrest.

“The child was not pepper-sprayed or injured during the arrest,” the statement said.

The woman, whose name was not released, was charged with trespassing.

Police chief Cynthia Herriot-Sullivan told reporters on Friday the officer appeared to follow protocol but “some things to me aren’t as simple as whether a policy was followed or not”.

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“Just because we can do certain things, doesn’t mean we should,” she said. “Can we get to the same place by utilizing a different strategy?”

The city’s Police Accountability Board, an entity created by a 2019 voter referendum to look into allegations of police misconduct, said it saw “troubling parallels” with another emergency call in which officers pepper-sprayed a distraught nine-year-old girl they had handcuffed and placed in the back of a police car during a family dispute.

“Both incidents involved Black mothers,” PAB chair Shani Wilson said. “Both involved Black children. Both involved Black people obviously in crisis. Both involved officers using pepper spray on or around a Black child.”