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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, will turn now to the Rochester New York incident last Friday, in which police pepper-sprayed a nine-year-old girl who is having a mental health crisis. We talked about abuse of children by the government in our last segment at the federal level. Well, here's one in New York State. We'll play 30 seconds of the sound now from a police bodycam recording of the incident. This is disturbing so if you don't want to hear it, turn off the radio for about a minute.

They're trying to get her in this clip to not resist being put in their patrol car as she cries out for her father. These 30 seconds start with the girl asking not to be pepper-sprayed because she has a bad arm and an officer saying just spray her at this point. You'll hear the girl coughing then and then an officer say unbelievable, like what a bother this girl in a mental crisis is to him. Listen.

Girl: You said that you're going to pepper spray me, no, please no stop. Stop, I got a bad arm.

Police: Just spray at this point.

Girl: You guys do not know I have a bad arm. Stop

Police: There. I got her.

Girl: Please, wipe my eyes. Please

Police: Unbelievable.

Brian Lehrer: That from the bodycam footage of one of the three officers involved elsewhere in the video and officer can be heard saying to the nine-year-old, you're acting like a child, to which she replied, "I am a child." One officer has been suspended, two others put on administrative leave. Governor Cuomo, Attorney General Letitia James, and Rochester Mayor, Lovely Warren have all denounced the police behavior in that case.

We'll talk about this incident in particular and some of the larger implications now with two guests. Ashley Sawyer, who is attorney and Senior Director of the group, Girls For Gender Equity, an intergenerational organization committed to the physical, psychological, social, and economic development of girls and women. Ashley Gantt, who is a Rochester-based organizer, a co-founder of the group Free The People Rock. Yes, we have two Ashley's in this segment, Ashley Gantt and Ashley Sawyer. I'm going got call you by your full names for obvious reasons. Thank you both for coming on and welcome to WNYC.

Ashley Gantt: [crosstalk] Thank you for having us.

Brian Lehrer: Ashley Gantt since you're Rochester based and I know you only have a few minutes for this, and we're involved in the protest after Daniel Prude was killed by police during a mental health episode earlier last year, could you talk first about why you believe this happened this way to this nine-year-old and what it says about the way the police respond to often to mental health crises.

Ashley Gantt: Yes absolutely. First, thank you guys for having us, it's an honor to be here with Ashley Sawyer. I'm excited about what we're going to unpack together today. Personally, and collectively as the organizers on the ground, I have been doing this work for a few years, I think what we see happened to the nine-year-old girl, if I'm completely honest, this is not the first time it's happened.

We saw on the news where the police union president talks about how this isn't the first time this nine-year-old girl had been on handcuffs. We also know other kids in our community who has been arrested, who has been in mental health crisis situation, even from the ages of 10 11, 12. Police have shown up, arrested them, tackled them to the ground, and pepper-sprayed them, and some incidents.

For me, this is an example of a police department that has no accountability, and we're talking about Rochester, but this happens across the United States. For us, this is just a response to police officers not really having accountability here. We see a lot with our mayor, with our police chief, our old one, and our new one. A lot of folks are always saying, 'Well, I'm not in control of them. I don't have jurisdiction over them," et cetera, et cetera, and that leaves them doing whatever they want to with practically no levels of accountability whatsoever.

Brian Lehrer: What would be the best practice in your opinion, in a case like this? From what I've read, there had just been a violent incident between her parents and the police say the girl was talking like she was suicidal, and they didn't want to let her run off for her own protection, that's the police version, as I understand it. What would make best practices in a situation like that to protect the girl.

Ashley Gantt: For us, we don't believe that police officers should be answering mental health calls, period. We were working now on what we'll calling Day of Law Legislation put forth in our assembly and our Senate. We believe that mental health professionals should be on the ground answering these calls. I know right now, in Rochester, we do have a unit of mental health professionals that do sit in our police department, and their job is to show up on calls where it's deemed a mental professional is needed.

What we found out is that they aren't being used at all. They're literally just sitting there listening to the calls but never been called. One of the reasons is because police officers have discretion to decide when a mental health professional is needed. For us, what we're saying is the mechanism that's currently in place does not work at all and we think that mental health professionals should be the power on the ground.

We are putting forth this legislation, hopefully, to get mental health professionals to be able to answer these calls. If a mental health professional deems that a police officer does need to be called, the person in charge on the ground will be the mental health professional and the police officers will be taking orders from them.

Brian Lehrer: Ashley Sawyer from girls for gender equity, same question before we get to some bigger picture questions. Once the theory a mental health professional, let's say rather than an armed police officer arrives on the scene in that situation, what would be the best practice assuming a suicidal nine-year-old who wants to run away from whoever is there, it was her mother, I believe, who called the police, so if we have that correct, what would be the best practice?

Ashley Sawyer: Certainly. First, I would want to backtrack a little bit because, one, naming first that I'm an attorney and not necessarily a mental health professional, but my understanding is that often incidents like what we saw, or what we heard happening in that video, and even the family conflict are often things that have-- That's not probably the first time and there probably could have been opportunities for their families to tap into services, tap into support long before and those services and those reports are often not available without some surveillance, without, excuse me a case from Child Protective Services.

What we want our real investment so that people in our community can tap into some help and manage whatever struggles a young person is experiencing. If they have a child who is experiencing a mental health crisis, or suicidal ideation, there should be services available to that child's school or to the community. Those we know are not available and they're often not well resourced, because of the ways that we use police to solve every single problem.

Even in that instance, once a mental health professional provider was able to show up and support that young person, we would want those mental health professionals to have adequate resources, have a conversation with the young person de-escalate, and those are things that they are skilled in doing, and that they know how to do especially people who have worked with children, people who understand the racial dynamics that were taking place here.

Police present in that situation could only escalate the situation and it would not have been able to meet the needs of a nine-year-old girl.

Brian Lehrer: Ashley Gantt, no matter what the best practices are, we can't let go on commented on the obvious lack of empathy on the part of the officer in that video, that audio, who I don't think it's reading into it too much to say, this girl in crisis was just a problem to him. We heard that in his voice I think we have to say that out loud. Ashley Gantt.

Ashley Gantt: Absolutely. I'm sorry, can you guys hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you.

Ashley Gantt: Absolutely. I think for us, especially people who are here who are watching it and for me personally, one of the things that made me angry the most is when he said to this nine-year-old, you're acting like a child and she responds, I am a child. For us, for Black and Brown women and for Black and Brown people altogether, we know that Black and Brown children don't usually get the opportunity to just be children.

The police officers and other people and systems that oppress us usually don't see children as children, especially Black children and that was like a huge example here. I think when we saw that, and we looked at the news and we looked at people on social media, people were so angry about that comment, and it just proved what we've been saying all along, the adultification of Black children, especially Black girls

Brian Lehrer: Do you feel the city in the state or at least responding to this incident? Ms. Gantt, in the ways that they should?

Ashley Gantt: Absolutely not. Organizers and people on the ground have been calling for these officers to be fired. Right now, they're on administrative leave and one is suspended all with pay. For us, that's like a paid vacation. The officers who murdered Daniel Prude are also still suspended with pay. We're calling for those officers to be fired.

Quite frankly, here in Rochester, we see that things are only made a big deal when the community makes it a big deal. In the wake of what happened to Daniel Prude and the pressure that's being put on our elected officials and our police department. I think they all could respond better. They all could respond more deliberately, and their response to the protection of this Black girl, so no, I don't think it's adequate, I don't think it's acceptable. Everywhere from our police department to our mayor, I think we need to change. I think we need new people in their place.

Brian Lehrer: I know you have to go in a couple of minutes Ms. Gantt, but I also know you were a leader in the protest in Rochester after the police killing of Daniel Prude also while experiencing a mental health crisis. Which was also revealed to be as bad as it was only after police bodycam video was released after a long delay. In that case, it was more rapid in this case, the release of the bodycam video, is bodycam video proving to be an important tool in your opinion, for police accountability, and what other systemic reforms do you think need to take place?

Ashley Gantt: I do think that the body cam footage is proven to be a tool, but I don't think it's the only thing that we need, right? We've been protesting day in and day out in the wake up to what happened to Daniel Prude. The reality is we can protest, but if we don't change policies that are in place that protect police officers, we're still going to be harmed and killed by police officers.

Another thing that needs to change is the police contract. Currently, we have a police contract here that literally protects police officers, and we're asking for it to be done away with. Usually, our mayor and our police union president are able to negotiate the police contract behind closed doors without public input. We're calling for that to end. I know that the police contract here right now, they haven't created a new one, they're working on the old one.

What we're asking for is that the old one that we'd be able to do away with it until we can come up with some more viable solutions. The police contract and the police union is a huge part in dismantling this system.

Brian Lehrer: Ashley Gantt, co-founder of the group, Free the People Rock, Rock as in Rochester, thank you very much for joining us today.

Ashley Gantt: Thank you so much for having me.

Brian Lehrer: We have a few minutes left with Ashley Sawyer, who is Senior Director of campaigns at the group, Girls for Gender Equity and Intergenerational Organization, committed to the physical, psychological, social, and economic development of girls and women. As we put this case from Rochester, in which police pepper-sprayed a nine-year-old girl, who was in a mental health crisis in context.

We can take a few phone calls for Ashley Sawyer at 646-435-7280. If you have a question or a comment, 646-435-7280. Ms. Sawyer, I saw some of your tweets that have gone viral with hundreds of thousands of likes that call for cutting police budgets, not settling for liberal reforms. Which they have done some of in Rochester. Can you layout that contrast for us between what you call liberal reforms and what you'd like to see done?

Ashley Sawyer: Sure, first I think it's important for us to see the pattern and the big picture about what happened. Girls for Gender Equity, we put out a couple of reports last year at the end of 2020 about incidents where police had contact with girls of color in New York City and across the state. We see that what happened to that young girl, unfortunately, is not unusual. It's just that it caught media attention.

One of the examples in our overlooked and plains recite report, and we're just looking at substantiated complaints against the New York City Police Department. Black girls made up 60% of those cases where the officer, these are under CCRB scrutiny, where the officer's behavior was substantiated. We saw in that report, a young girl in Central Harlem, was as young as eight years old had been harmed by a police officer in a substantiated complaint.

This is not unusual. Ashley Gantt mentioned adultification bias, there's research and science that shows that educators and people in contact with the youth of color, particularly Black girls see Black girls about five years older than what they really are, and that's a national trend. We know that police are not capable of treating mental health crises. They're not capable of providing the healing and support that people need when they're in a tough moment.

GGE also has a police-free schools campaign. The data is really clear that police presence increases the likelihood that Black students in particular are going to end up with an arrest or some type of juvenile or criminal charge. When we know that over and over again for decades, people have tried, well, why don't we do another training? Why don't we let the police learn about racial bias, or why don't we teach them about mental health?

It has not worked. We know that Black children, Latin X children, trans, and gender-nonconforming children are disproportionately impacted by police violence in their communities and in their schools. This can't be fixed by training. It can't be fixed by pats on the wrist and in New York City, in particular, we've seen it. The police department is just not accountable for their behavior and that it's not going to change with more rules and regulations.

We know that Black girls often get overlooked in the bigger conversations, when we think about what's happening to them.Wwhat we saw in Rochester, I want to keep emphasizing that's not unusual. In my experience as an attorney, when I represented young people in New York City, they often told me about unlawful cavity searches that happened in the park, police, sexually harassing them.

These are ongoing patterns that can't be fixed with a few mental health training here and there. We have to really think about taking money away from police departments and investing that in services for houseless folks, in education and community development, things that communities desperately need. That research shows are more likely to create safety and reduce violence when people have jobs or when there's adequate food and shelter for everyone. That's what actually is tied to research around safety and fewer incidents of violence.

Brian Lehrer: I'm so glad you brought up what you call the adultification of Black children in the eyes of the police. Seeing them as five years older on average, you said the stat is than they actually are. Because that was a factor in many people's estimation in the Tamir Rice killing. In Cleveland, a 12-year-old boy who was perceived as bigger than he was with a toy gun.

The Michael Brown incident too, I would say in Ferguson where he was a teenager and the evidence was that he was perceived by the cop as really, really, really big. There's that perception problem that deserves some spotlight too. I'm glad you brought it up. Let's take a phone call, Sophia in Rockaway you're in WNYC, thank you for calling in.

Sophia: Hi, thanks for taking my call. My point is that mental health issues, it's the base of everything. Because you're trying to educate people. You're not going to be able to educate them with a couple of classes like you guys said, it really needs to start and much deeper. I don't know what the answer is because my mother, 93 years old, for all my life had mental health issues.

When we had to put her in her last year in a nursing home, their lack of understanding, even though I went and explained to them over and over again to different homes what her issues were, they were ill-equipped. The callousness that I saw in their treatment of her is outrageous. Also, when I tried to get my son help, as a teenager, the lack of health for kids that are adolescents was near impossible.

It's a much bigger issue, and unless we really address it as a society, we're going to keep seeing this and it's not just going to be the police.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much, Sophia. Ms. Sawyer, do you want to respond to that in any way?

Ashley Sawyer: Yes, what I heard Ms. Sophia saying is that there's a lack of support and services in our communities. If you can think about it, imagine there's a police precinct in every neighborhood, and they have millions and millions of dollars in New York City, of course, $6 billion divided up for all sorts of things. Imagine if every neighborhood had several offices that were available and run by trained culturally competent community members to provide mental health support for elderly folks.

Mental health support that was particularly geared towards children, toward people who are not a child or an elderly person. Not necessarily, just if you're a person in your mid-fifties and you're in a desperate place and you need help. There are no services for folks like that. Then when I talk about, and I extend that to schools, in particular, schools should be one of our biggest investment.

Most of the students in New York City as an example, and this is not to say that this isn't happening upstate and across the state, but many students don't have access to a mental health professional as easily. We have more police in New York City Schools than some entire police precincts. We have more cops per person in New York City public schools than the entire city of Phoenix, the entire city of Washington, DC.

When a young person is saying, "My aunt or my grandmother just died of COVID, and my family's facing eviction, and I'm desperate, and I'm sad, and I'm depressed," where do they go? There's a cop, they can find a cop pretty easily, but they could not find a trained mental health professional, or just a counselor or restorative justice practitioner. I heard that caller saying, is we don't have enough of what we need, and when we use police to try to substitute that, we just see more violence and we just see more harm, and we see that particularly when we're talking about Black folks and people of color.

Brian Lehrer: Our great caller, Myat from the city is on the line with a connection that I think a lot of people might not make, but Myat, I'm glad to call with this because I was thinking the same thing. I'm going to let you do it. Hi.

Myat: Yes. This is such a great discussion. When you look at January 6, and I actually saw satirical cartoons where the people actually were presenting cards, saying white privilege. These people were involved with mayhem and murder, and an attempted coup. This footage is a lady being held down the steps. It's just such contrast to whether it's Sandra Bland, or the child in Rochester. It just boggles the mind, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Myat, thank you. I'll tell you the connection along these lines that I was making last night, as I was reading in on this Rochester story. For this segment this morning, I saw go by on NBC News, a story that one of the women charged in the Capitol riot got permission from a judge to go to a vacation spot in Mexico, out of the country. The CNN version here says, "A Texas woman charged in connection with Capitol insurrection, has asked a federal judge," and then apparently she got this permission, "to let her travel to Mexico for a 'work-related bonding retreat.'"

This is at a vacation spot. She says, she is a small business owner and this is a bonding retreat with her employees, but what she's been charged with was-- I'm sorry, I don't have the exact alleged crime here, but her comments afterwards in her own Facebook feed included that she claimed she was able to, "break down Nancy Pelosi's office door" and then said "F-word, yes, I am proud of my actions. I effing charged the Capitol today with patriots today, I would absolutely do it again." She's been allowed by a judge reportedly to go to a vacation spot outside the country, while the nine-year-old in Rochester in the mental health crisis gets pepper-sprayed. Ms. Sawyer?

Ashley Sawyer: What can we even say to that? I think those types of juxtapositions, the disparate treatment, that should tell us that this is not something that can be fixed with more trainings, or reports, or studies, or task forces with police. I'm grateful that you mentioned the death of Tamir Rice because what we often overlook is the way the police treated his sister who just witnessed her brother be murdered before her eyes.

She was 14 years old, and the police handcuffed and arrested her after they murdered her 12-year-old brother in front of her eyes, and that's a young Black girl, and that's how they're treated when they experienced trauma. I also think about the young woman who filmed the murder of George Floyd, another young Black woman, who basically have to go into hiding after sharing the video of George Floyd being murdered.

Again, and again, Black women and Black girls are bearing witness and are the victims of police violence, police brutality, post-sexual assault at the hands of the police, which is a big part of our work at GGE as well, and there is no care for them, there's no support for them. I want to really remind folks of the ways that Black women and Black girls get treated when they come into contact with law enforcement.

I just want to keep reminding folks that that's not going to be fixed with another task force or a slap on the wrist for the officers or a short-term payback as Ashley gets it. For those officers this is where we have to say to our local city council members and to our elected officials, we need you to use the purse strings, particularly in this crisis, to redirect resources to what could have actually provided safety and healing for the members of our community and also for Black girls in particular.

Brian Lehrer: We leave it there with Ashley Sawyer from Girls for Gender Equity. She has previously been co-chair of the Legal Rights of Children Committee for the Philadelphia Bar Association and has that tweet that went so viral, it's gotten close to 500,000 likes last time I looked with reference to the Rochester case with a nine-year-old girl. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Ashley Sawyer: Thank you so much for having me.

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