Chad Brady is the name of one of four Rochester Police officers whose names were officially released by the Rochester Police Department (RPD) today in connection with the pepper spraying of a 9 year old black girl last month. Brady is the only one whose name was not published on CopBlaster.com as a result of our investigation before they were released by the RPD. Hannah Schneeberger (https://copblaster.com/blast/34415/hannah-schneeberger-idd-as-rochester-officer-pepper-spraying-child), Alexander Lombard (https://copblaster.com/blast/34418/rochester-officer-alexander-lombard-idd-pepper-spraying-little-girl), and Adam Bradstreet (https://copblaster.com/blast/34416/rochester-officer-adam-bradstreet-involved-in-pepper-spraying-girl) were outed after Cop Blaster worked with members of the community to identify officers involved by looking at public records and body camera footage. Cop Blaster sent the results of the investigation to multiple news outlets in the Rochester area, but received no replies until Will Cleveland of the Democrat and Chronicle tweeted back to us today:
"what we know and what we report are two different things. we have to abide by a strict code of ethics and maintain our integrity above all us. we owe that to our readers and the community." - Will Cleveland (https://twitter.com/WillCleveland13/status/1360374793346891777)
That sounds a lot like an admission that the D and C knew who some of the officers were before their names were released by the RPD. Cleveland's statement is consistent with responses we have received from members of the mainstream media in other parts of the country after we named names of officers in other cases before their names were released by their associated police departments. For example, after we exposed the identity of Florissant Detective Joshua Smith (https://copblaster.com/blast/25767/florissant-police-detective-joshua-smith-suspected-in-vehicle-assault) we were told by Alexis Zotos of KMOV (after the FPD released his name and pointing out that we were the first to identify Smith):
"I know you did. But we have a protocol on how we identify people... Its the same protocol we do in any investigation. We don't name suspects until they've been charged." Alexis Zotos (https://twitter.com/alexiszotos/status/1270865590522187777)
Notice the similarities between the statements of Zotos and Cleveland? Both indicate a policy against posting names of police officers known to them unless their names are released by the government. To Cleveland's credit he pointed out "I never received any links from you" (https://twitter.com/WillCleveland13/status/1360381979586396165). That is true, we did not contact Cleveland personally with any links. We believe that we sent them to the D and C via their online form, but because they never responded we cannot say for certain. It is possible that we sent the links to only other Rochester outlets, but we don't think we missed the D and C. Even if we did not send the links to the D and C that would not explain Cleveland's answer. If he didn't know any of their names why didn't he simply say that he did not know their names until they were released by the RPD? Why bother explaining that ethical issues influence what they report?
Now, back to Chad Brady. The RPD released the video below which contains 86 minutes of new footage. We have not had the chance to look at it, so we will wait until we have watched it before we write about Brady's involvement. We did see one part that appears to be from Brady's body cam and it shows him standing directly behind Lombard when the pepper spray was deployed. We know from the first two videos that neither of them showed Brady at that point. The previous videos released do not appear to show Brady playing much of a role if any. We found a picture of Brady on the Facebook page of the Brockport Police Department where he worked before joining the RPD. Brockport is a suburb of Rochester. Brady has lived in the Rochester area his entire life and attended East Ridge High School in the Rochester Suburb or Irondequoit.
UPDATE: At about 32:25 in the video it sounds like Brady may have said "just spray her." That appears to be the end of his involvement in the pepper spraying itself. It goes beyond just failing to intervene when an officer encourages and directs others to pepper spray a little kid.