Rochester Police Officers That Pepper Sprayed Child Identified

Online activists have identified five Rochester police officers involved in the pepper spraying of a 9 year old black girl on January 29, 2021 using body camera footage and public records. The identification took place after the Rochester Police Department (RPD) refused to release the names of the officers citing "safety concerns." Those concerns are not shared by the people at CopBlaster.com who went on a mission to identify the names of the officers seen in two videos taken from body cameras worn by two of the officer that the RPD released shortly after the incident. Those videos show two officers pepper spraying the girl, a third putting his hands on her inappropriately, and several others failing to intervene.

The Officers

The worst offender was Officer Hannah Schneeberger (/sni:z/bu:ge(r)/). Schneeberger is the female officer featured in the video below. At one point she can be heard threatening the child "this is your last chance otherwise pepper spray is going in your eyeballs." Shortly thereafter she can be seen shaking her can of pepper spray violently while the officer wearing the body camera was deploying his pepper spray. Schneeberger was identified after an ex-boyfriend posted a screenshot of a chat with her in which he failed to redact the name that he had saved her contact information under on his phone. That name was "Crazy Hannah." That made identifying Schneeberger easy because the RPD makes the full names of all active duty officers publicly available as part of their Open Data Portal. According to the Open Data Portal there is only one RPD officer with the first name "Hannah" and that officer's last name is Schneeberger. On top of that Cop Blaster was able to find a Pinterest account under her name with a profile picture that bears a striking resemblance to the woman in the video, the woman in the profile picture was wearing a t-shirt from a Rochester bar, the account featured several posts containing thin blue line propaganda, and shortly after Schneeberger's name was outed the account was deleted.

The video above was taken from the body camera of Officer Alexander Lombard. Officer Lombard was identified after someone noticed that his last name was visible in a different body cam video (below). The Open Data Portal only has one record of a current RPD officer with the last name "Lombard" and that officer is Alexander Lombard. Further analysis of the body camera videos showed that at the same time that Lombard's name is visible in the video below, that the person wearing the body camera in the video above is standing in the same location that Lombard is in the video below.

Officer Adam Bradstreetmay or may not have been wearing the body camera from which the video above was taken. At one point in the second body camera video an officer can be heard asking "Bradstreet what's her name?" According to the audio on that video the answer to that question appears to have come from the back of the patrol vehicle where one officer was standing, but there are now doubts as to whether or not that officer is Bradstreet. Those doubts arose after a Cop Blaster user pointed out that the identification number of the above video ends with AB2622 which are Bradstreet's initials and badge number according to Open Oversight. Cop Blaster countered that the identification number of the other video could not be linked to a badge number, so the match in the first video could be coincidence and that the first video ends before the question is asked so nobody can be sure where the person wearing the first body camera was at that time. What is for certain is that the RPD Open Data Portal lists just one officer with the last name "Bradstreet" and that officer is Adam Bradstreet. What is also certain is that Bradstreet was not one of the officers that pepper sprayed the child, but he may have put hands on her earlier. At the very least he failed to intervene when Schneeberger threatened the child.

Officers Ethan Paszko and John Soures were identified as having failed to intervene after Schneeberger threatened the child. Both of their last names are visible on their uniforms and both of those last names have just one corresponding match in the RPD Open Data Portal. Officers Paszko and Soures are visible in the first body camera video standing in the middle of the street not far from Schneeberger when she threatened the child. Cop Blaster believes that Paszko and Soures had a lawful duty to intervene at that point. Failure to intervene can lead to tort liability under the law when that failure amounts to deliberate indifference. Cop Blaster, whose founder is an ex-con with experience successfully suing the federal government for battery while acting as his own lawyer, cites several examples from correctional settings in which federal courts held correctional officers liable for failing to intervene during inmate beatings. Examples such as Smith v. Mensinger, 293 F.3d 641 (3rd Cir. 2002) in which the Third Circuit Court of Appeals said, "We hold that a corrections officer's failure to intervene in a beating can be the basis of liability...if the corrections officer had a reasonable opportunity to intervene and simply refused to do so. Furthermore, we hold that a corrections officer cannot escape liability by relying upon his inferior or non-supervisory rank vis-a-vis the other officers." Cop Blaster then claims that Schneeberger violated the child's Constitutional rights when she threatened her with pepper spray and the other officers had a lawful duty to intervene at that point.

Community Reaction

The identification of these officers is largely due to Cop Blaster reaching out to the community for tips. They began by writing a piece titled "What are the Names of the Rochester Cops That Pepper Sprayed a Child?" Several people responded to that piece with tips as to the identities of the officers. Cop Blaster investigated those tips and verified the accuracy of some with public records and other online research.

The reaction to the naming of the officers has been overwhelmingly positive with one link to the Schneeberger article receiving over 3,000 upvotes on Reddit in a single day. One Redditor said, "That's some A+ sleuthing. Putting on 20+ pounds since her pinterest photo wasn't enough to keep from IDing her."

Other reactions have not been so positive. Several people have complained that the practice of naming the officers constitutes doxxing and have accused the Cop Blaster website of not being a credible source of information. Such accusations are likely the reason why /r/Rochester has removed every link to the site from their page, likely unaware that the RPD already doxxed all their officers with the Open Data Portal and Cop Blaster has a history of successfully identifying officers in cases like this before the mainstream media does. Last year, Cop Blaster was credited for being the first outlet to name Florissant Detective Joshua Smith after he was caught on camera running down an unarmed black man with a SUV. That case was similar to this one in that the police did not release the name of officer, but they did release enough information that Cop Blaster could figure out who he was once the right public records were obtained.

Cop Blaster reached out to members of the mainstream media repeatedly in the Florrisant case thinking that reporters would surly be eager to do a follow up naming the officer, but found out that the opposite was true. As a result Cop Blaster remained the only outlet to post his name for days until the Florissant Police officially released his name. When contacting members of the media that ignored previous messages containing the officer's name to say "I told you so," Cop Blaster received responses citing corporate policies against naming police officers unless their names are released by the police or they are charged with a crime. As a result the mainstream media makes no effort to figure out the identities of unnamed officers and will not follow up on any tips leading to their identities. The Twitter thread below is just one example.

As a result of those protocols it is almost impossible for outlets like Cop Blaster to expose names of officers without giving critics the counter argument that none of the information can be verified using mainstream media unless the police release their names someday. Such arguments often create a successful smokescreen that prevents readers from reading Cop Blaster's findings just because they cannot cite a mainstream media source to corroborate them, but those that do read the findings usually reach the same conclusions as Cop Blaster.

Cop Blaster also reached out to the girl's mother Elba Pope on social media by sending her a link to the Schneeberger article. Pope responded by saying, "They are not releasing his name to me either," and asking "may I ask who do you work for?" Cop Blaster answered her question but has not received any more replies from Pope.

Conclusion

Cop Blaster was able to successfully identify five of the officers involved in the pepper spraying of a 9 year old girl in Rochester. Those identified include the two that sprayed the girl and three others that failed to intervene. Cop Blaster credits tips solicited from the public and a little luck with giving them what they needed to know to figure out who they are. The public's reaction has been mostly positive despite the unwillingness of the mainstream media to verify the findings.

UPDATE: On February 12, 2021 the RPD released the names of four officers involved in the incident. Those names were Hannah Schneeberger, Alexander Lombard, Adam Bradstreet, and Chad Brady. As you can see, the first three names released by the RPD were already published by Cop Blaster. This update is based on an article by the Democrat and Chronicle in Rochester.