The Hagerstown, Maryland Police Department released body camera footage from an incident on September 18 in which a police officer used pepper spray on a 15-year-old mixed-race girl after she struck a auto while riding her bicycle.
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Capt. Paul Kifer said Wednesday that the white officers who arrested the mixed-race girl acted properly.
The video shows an officer arriving at the scene of a bicycle-car collision, and the girl, apparently unhurt, getting off her bike and walking away. “She was uncooperative”, Brito repeatedly said at a press conference this afternoon, saying the girl kicked an officer and knocked off his body-worn camera.
Handcuffed and shoved into the back of a police cruiser, the girl refused to pull her feet into the vehicle so officers could lock her in. “She got on her bike, started peddling away to go home, and a huge officer grabbed her off her bike without any warning whatsoever from behind”.
A Hagerstown, Maryland, police spokesman says several officers involved in the pepper-spray arrest of a 15-year-old girl remain on duty while the department investigates.
“The only treatment she got (from police) was slamming, abuse and Mace”, said Ficker, adding that the police ordered the hospital not to take any photos of the girl’s chemical burns.
According to Flicker, the girl – who is the daughter of a white mother and a black father – was riding her bike on Sunday afternoon when she was struck by a auto. “I don’t teach them to disrespect adults”, her mom said.
The teen was later charged with disorderly conduct, assault and possession of marijuana, according to police.
Kifer said investigators determined that the girl caused the accident. The driver then tells the officer he was coming down the street while the light was green when the girl came around the corner, didn’t stop and hit the side of his vehicle. “I’ll spray her, if you just want to step back”, one officer says.
“Her face hit the windowsill”, Ficker stated. However, since she was non-compliant, officers did have to take her to the station, however they could.
Maryland cops assaulted the biracial teen, gassed her, and then took her to the police station to charge her with a litany of awful offences. Eventually two officers handcuffed the girl and carried her into a cruiser.
Ficker, retained by the mother, posted a bystander’s cellphone video on Facebook Tuesday. Following another refusal, the 15-year-old was, as specified by Ficker, physically removed from her bicycle by two Hagerstown policemen and handcuffed immediately.
Chief Victor Brito said at a news conference in Hagerstown Thursday that pepper-spraying the girl to get her into a cruiser was the minimal amount of force needed to gain her cooperation.
The teen said she was never told why she was being arrested.
“All we want to do is make sure she’s OK”, one officer tells a concerned bystander.
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“Had we had cooperation. if we had had her information and we were able to call her parents to the scene, we would have … adjudicated that right there”, Brito said. When the video returns, it is from the body camera of another officer, the city said, Herald Mail Media reports.
