Body-camera videos of police pepper-spraying a 15-year-old girl in Maryland have touched off an uproar.
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The Hagerstown Police Department released bodycam video showing the officer pepper-spraying the teen.
A 15-year-old Maryland girl pepper-sprayed by police says she resisted arrest because she was dizzy, confused and scared after her bicycle hit a moving auto, briefly knocking her unconscious. Then, while the girl is handcuffed in the back of the vehicle, police are seen firing pepper spray at her through the window. “You’re getting sprayed”, he says before using the spray and then closing the door as the girl screams. “You need to calm down, OK?” the officer tells her. “Take a seat”. “Then she recovered, woke up and the ambulance came”. She went toward the wall. In the video, you can hear the girl speaking in a panicked manner, requesting that the officers find a Black officer named “Zach” to help her.
After she falls as she ducks underneath the duo’s forearms, one of the patrolmen stands her up and brutally tosses her 5′ tall, 110 lb. frame into a concrete wall.
The video shows that the white officers repeatedly tried to question the mixed-race girl and get contact information for her parents, in part to authorize her refusal to receive medical treatment from the paramedics who responded to the accident.
Several officers involved in the arrest remain on duty, during the investigation.
Hagerstown Police told The Daily Beast that they were simultaneously investigating the girl’s bike crash while attempting to take her to the hospital. “She attempted to leave on a bicycle … she refused to give ay info on who she was”. Ficker said she was treated and released with sprained muscles and soreness everywhere, including her wrists from being handcuffed.
Bystanders summoned police, but the girl refused medical attention. “They certainly don’t arrest every Jehovah’s Witness that refuses treatment”.
A pair of Facebook video posts purportedly showing a biracial Hagersfield teenager being harshly accosted by police is making waves on social media. “Don’t f–ing touch me”, before she walks away and gets on her bike, saying she doesn’t want her parents to be called. “She could die later … all we want to do is make sure she’s okay”. “We nearly had to forcibly keep her here”.
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The cop tells the girl to put her feet in the auto or get sprayed. It would be him who would finally get the young girl properly attended to, including an eye rinse that occurred more than three hours after she was initially subdued with the pepper spray. The girl coughs and screams before the auto drives off.
Her father later took her to the hospital, where the “only treatment she got (from police) was slamming, abuse and Mace”, Ficker said.
The teen was charged with disorderly conduct, two counts of second-degree assault, possession of marijuana and failure to obey a traffic device.
“I was very upset, I was very scared”, the teen said.
Police did not return a request for a copy of the arrest report.
“I told them multiple times that I was okay, in my head, I knew I was not okay”.
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“It’s ridiculous”, he added.
