The girl and her mother spoke to reporters Thursday outside Hagerstown police headquarters while dozens of people demonstrated nearby, demanding accountability. “Then she recovered, woke up and the ambulance came”.
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She denied medical care and when police tried to question her, she rode away.
Hagerstown police Chief Victor V. Brito said during a Thursday news conference his officers followed department policies and procedures during the incident, which along with fatal shootings at the hands of police across the country, has sparked national outrage.
A bystander’s cell phone video appears to show an officer swinging the girl by her handcuffed arm toward a building and then later shows the girl pressed face-first against a wall.
She was taken to a police station and later charged as a juvenile with assault, disorderly conduct, a traffic violation and marijuana possession.
The Washington Post reported that Flicker said that video the police released proves the arresting police officers used “aggression from the get-go”.
Ficker said his client, who neither he nor police have identified, was riding her bike through an intersection with a yellow light when she was struck by a vehicle.
“Yeah, we are calling your parents”, an officer says. A bystander tells her she’s going to make it worse, but she tries to ride away.
“Again, we are actively involved in a traffic accident, which we had the authority and the mandate to investigate when we got there”, Brito said. The girl has said she fought the officers because she was dizzy, confused and scared. He was anxious for the teen after she struck his driver’s side door on her bike.
Police video shows an officer in Maryland pepper-spraying a 15-year-old girl who refused to cooperate after her bicycle hit a auto.
But, he said, the officer was clear to a superior that he was going to pepper-spray the teen and only did so in order to overcome her resistance to being placed in a police vehicle.
The videos show passersby watching as officers repeatedly tell the girl, who was in handcuffs, “you are going to get sprayed”, and ordered her to put her feet inside the patrol vehicle. She repeatedly refuses, swears and struggles to get free. Hysterical, the teen pleads for the officers to let her go, which they refused to do.
Her lawyer Robin Ficker posted on Facebook: “This little girl, 5 ft”. Kifer declined to identify them or their daughter, citing privacy concerns.
Later that evening, police put a 14-minute video on the department’s Facebook page, which was taken from two police body-worn cameras.
“Get off of me, stop touching me!” she screams, and an officer responds, “I’m not going to stop touching you, because you wanted to leave”. One cop tells her that they need to contact her parents because she’s underage. She refuses to help them, saying she will get in trouble. However, since she was non-compliant, officers did have to take her to the station, however they could. She kicks one of their body cameras, stopping the recording, the department explained.
“We’re detaining you for incooperation with an investigation”, one officer says while the girl is forcibly cuffed. “I got a sprayer if you just want to step back”.
Apparently handcuffed at the time, the girl screams and a coughs after an officer sprays the chemical at her through the car’s open window, yelling “I can’t breathe” before she was driven to the police station.
Ficker said he will defend the girl against all charges.
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Police said that during the investigation, “the juvenile had to be detained” and that she began to be “assaultive” during the arrest, which is why she was pepper-sprayed.
