The video shows two Hagerstown Police Department officers struggle with a teen who screams as they repeatedly try to detain her and get her to comply.
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Police in Hagerstown, Md., have come under fire after body-camera footage showed an officer pepper-spraying a 15-year-old girl who was handcuffed in the back of a squad vehicle.
“Get off of me!” the girl cried repeatedly, as she struggled with the officer for several minutes before two cops lifted her up and put her in the back of a police vehicle.
Police said the girl was charged as a juvenile with assault and disorderly conduct. See the video below.
Police insist they grabbed the teen crash victim, wrestled her into a patrol vehicle and pepper-sprayed her because she refused to cooperate with the investigation, submit to a medical checkup, or give her name or her parents’ names.
Ficker said the charges that police have recommended against her should be dismissed immediately. She was taken to the Police Department and released to a parent.
She would not provide her name or tell them who her parents were, he said.
The girl continued to scream until an officer aimed his pepper spray at her through the open auto window and another officer closed the door.
An attorney for a 15-year-old Maryland girl pepper-sprayed by police says body-camera video proves the officers overreacted.
“All we want to do is make sure she’s OK”, one officer tells a concerned bystander.
At a news conference scheduled to let the press know details about the arrest of the teen girl, Hagerstown Mayor David Gysberts (GYZE-berts) slammed the teen girl’s attorney, calling her “a showboating, sideshow attorney”. Her daughter is biracial, and the officers were white.
Ficker said the girl’s father took her to the hospital after picking her up at the police station. “But they (the officers) followed policy and pattern and procedure for the Hagerstown Police Department”. Bystanders summoned police, but the girl refused medical attention.
The 15-year-old Maryland girl who was pepper sprayed is shown in a photo posted September 20, 2016, by her attorney, Robin Ficker, on his Facebook page. He said they were trying to get the girl inside a police cruiser and off to the police station as a potentially risky crowd began gathering.
The girl and her mother spoke to reporters Thursday outside Hagerstown police headquarters while dozens of people demonstrated nearby, demanding accountability.
Gysberts says the girl and her family should sit down with police in a mediation session to resolve their dispute. They then lifted her hands above her head and slammed her face into a wall, smashing her chin into a windowsill. The incident happened Wednesday afternoon (Sept. 21) when a man claimed the teen rode through a red light and hit his vehicle.
“I can’t breathe”, cried the girl, who is not being identified by CNN. A statement on the page from the law firm reads, “This little girl, 5 ft”. Ficker posted on Facebook.
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She was later taken to the hospital by her father, where she was diagnosed with a possible concussion and other injuries, Ficker said.
