A police chief in Michigan is apologizing after his officers were seen on body cam footage handcuffing an innocent 11-year-old girl at gunpoint.
“Listening to the 11-year-old’s response makes my stomach turn,” Grand Rapids Police Department chief David M. Rahinsky said at a press conference Wednesday. “It makes me physically nauseous.” He said cops shouldn’t have treated the girl like an adult.
Footage shows officers responded to a suspected attempted murder stemming from a domestic violence incident on Dec. 6. They believed the suspect, still armed with a knife, escaped a home, and cops attempted to trace her to another residence. Reportedly, they saw two women and the 11-year-old girl leaving the house.
“No! No! No!” the girl shrieks as an officer handcuffs her. One cops tells her she’s not going to jail. He and another told her to stop crying.
Cops said they detained the two women and the girl while determining if they were actually the suspect. The answer was no.
“Until it could be determined that the individuals were not the suspect, nor armed with a weapon, the three were ordered back to officers and detained,” the GRPD said in a Facebook statement on Monday. “The homeowner gave consent to search the home, and it was deemed that none of the three individuals that exited the home were the suspect officers were searching for nor was the suspect in the home. The females were subsequently released.”
The GRPD is now investigating how their own cops handled the incident.
[Screengrab via Grand Rapids Police Department]
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