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Associated Press
Michael Hill
Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. Photo from Screen grab / Google Street View
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A western New York police investigator has been suspended after handcuffing an emergency medical technician in a hospital emergency room after she crashed his car while unloading a patient from an ambulance.
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The suspension was announced by city police Monday, a week after EMT Lekia Smith was handcuffed at Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester.
Security video obtained by WHEC-TV shows the investigator cornering Smith, a black woman, as she stands next to a patient on a stretcher. He takes her by the hand, fastens her hands behind her back, and leads her outside.
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Police said the incident was under investigation but declined to provide details and would not release the officer’s name. The employee is still paid while suspended.
Smith’s attorney, Elliott Shields, said it all started outside after the investigator parked in the ambulance. The ambulance got out of its ambulance to unload a patient and hit the police car with its door. The investigator asked for her identification, but Smith explained that he needed to get his patient inside first.
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Shields said the investigator then put her in a bear hug, which caused her to temporarily lose her grip on the cart before breaking free. After handcuffing the hospital EMT, the officer took her to his car and questioned her before letting her go, Shields said.
“We don’t need investigators — high-ranking officers — behaving this way, endangering the community,” Shields said.
Smith released a statement through the Save Rochester community group, saying he still has “some mental and physical difficulties” but wants to return to work as an emergency physician and see justice done quickly.
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Rochester Police Chief David Smith promised a thorough investigation.
“Obviously, this incident is of deep concern to me,” he said in a statement.
The Rochester police union, the Locust Club, called the investigator’s suspension “confusing.”
“The incident in question reached a mutually acceptable resolution that day when both the investigator and the EMT team were able to jointly discuss the reasons for their actions and both accepted each other’s explanations,” it said in a statement.
Shields said that’s not accurate.
Save Rochester said the incident points to a damaged relationship between police and people of color. In 2020, police and city officials came under fire for the way they handled the strangulation death of Daniel Prude, a black man who died that March, a week after he was held by police officers to the sidewalk while he stopped to breathing
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