On January 29, 2021, the Rochester Police Department responded to a call about a 9-year-old girl who was experiencing a mental health crisis. In a horrifying video from police bodycam footage, they proceeded to handcuff, tackle, and pepper spray her in an attempt to get her into the police car. Pepper spray itself is extremely harmful and has many potentially damaging effects on children such as:

• severe burns
• permanent eye damage
• 
  respiratory damage, especially with kids who have asthma 
•  
  psychological damage, from the trauma of the event
• 
  combination of other chemicals in the spray can produce arrhythmias and sudden death

With these effects in mind, we need to put restrictions on the use of pepper spray, especially since the police can't determine someone's preexisting conditions in the heat of the moment. By overall limiting the use of pepper spray on minors, especially those in a mental health crisis, we can prevent instances like this from happening again, and we can hopefully work towards having these issues be addressed by mental health care professionals who are trained in helping people who are experiencing mental health crises. Until then, we need to severely restrict when the police can use pepper spray, in hopes that we can move towards a process that is much more humane.