Rochester Police Officer Alexander Lombard has been identified on camera pepper spraying a 9 year old girl. Lombard is seen in the video below at about 5:30 arriving on the scene and being told by a fellow officer to "put her in your car." Then the body camera falls off the other officer's body and Lombard can be seen putting hands on the girl. Eventually the girl ends up on the ground, Lombard helps the other officer pull her up, and as they moved her towards Lombard's vehicle the body camera got knocked off the other officer again, so there are several minutes of darkness with audio. Eventually the other officer put his body camera back on and the girl is in the back seat of Lombard's vehicle talking to Officer Hannah Schneeberger (/sni:z/bu:ge(r)/). At that point several officers not including Lombard can be seen standing in the middle of the road. We believe that Lombard was on the other side of the car at that point and eventually filmed himself pepper spraying the girl with his won body camera.
Our conclusion as to Lombard's identity and whereabouts when the girl was pepper sprayed is based on new information that we received from a user. A user commented that he believed Lombard to have filmed himself pepper spraying the girl in the second video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku41-899CHo) and after further review we believe that he is correct. We originally mistook Lombard for fellow officer John Soures and ruled Soures out as the owner of the second camera (https://copblaster.com/blast/34414/rochester-police-officer-john-soures-idd-at-pepper-spraying-of-child) because Soures was clearly identified in the video below at about 10:23 standing in the middle of the road when the girl was sprayed, so he could not possibly be the sprayer. We originally thought that Soures arrived on the scene much earlier because we could not read Lombard's name on his uniform and Lombard was dressed the same as Soures. They are both white males in their mid-20s with brown facial hair of similar height, weight, and build wearing the same RPD beanie. We now believe that Soures made his first appearance without a beanie at about 9:30 and that is why we did not notice him at first. Because we thought that Lombard was Soures we could not consider him as a suspect until one of our users posted a comment containing a link to a screenshot in which he was able to capture Lombard's name tag in a readable form (https://ibb.co/album/pb02nf?sort=name_asc). We then found the same timestamp in our copy of the video and verified that the same name is visible there. Now that we have identified that officer as Lombard, have established that the vehicle was his, that he was unaccounted for in the video while the owner of the second camera was standing on the other side of the car, that he is never visible in the second video, and both videos appear to show that at 15:47:37 Lombard was seen standing in the first video exactly where the owner of the second video was standing; we now believe that Lombard was wearing the second camera and filmed himself pepper spraying the little girl(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku41-899CHo).
According to public records, Alexander M. Lombard is a 28 year old resident of Brockport, New York. He moved to Brockport from Albion in 2018 when he was hired by the RPD. According to the RPD Open Data Portal (https://data-rpdny.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/rpd-police-personnel/data) Alexander Lombard is the only current RPD officer with the last name Lombard, was hired on September 24, 2018, he was 26 years old the day he was hired, and has held the same rank the entire time. Open Oversight has no badge number for him, but their profile appears consistent with the RPD data. According to GovSalaries he made $63,327 working as a patrol officer for the City of Rochester in 2020 (https://govsalaries.com/lombard-alexander-90985724).
Other officers involved whose identities are known to us at this time include:
Hannah Schneeberger (https://copblaster.com/blast/34415/hannah-schneeberger-idd-as-rochester-officer-pepper-spraying-child): She was the blonde woman heard threatening the girl with pepper spray before she was sprayed. Schneeberger was filmed by Lombard's body camera shaking her can of pepper spray at 5:50 in that video right before Lombard took out his can and sprayed her (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku41-899CHo). Some people have responded to that by saying that it doesn't show her spraying the girl, but just because the girl's body obstructed Schneeberger as she bent down to the right height she would have had to be at to pepper spray her in the eyes does not mean that she didn't do it.
Adam Bradstreet (https://copblaster.com/blast/34416/rochester-officer-adam-bradstreet-involved-in-pepper-spraying-girl): Was standing near Schneeberger when she threatened the girl and failed to intervene. We are looking into the possibility that the first body camera (embedded below) was Bradstreet's camera. We had placed him to Schneeberger's left based on where we believe the answer to the question "Bradstreet what's her name?" came from, but are reanalyzing that conclusion based on the identification of Lombard. Part of the problem is that the first video ends before that question was asked so there is no way to say for sure where the owner of the first body camera was at that time. Either way he was close enough to Schneeberger to stop her and did nothing.
John Soures (https://copblaster.com/blast/34414/rochester-police-officer-john-soures-idd-at-pepper-spraying-of-child): Was standing in the road close enough to Schneeberger to hear her threaten the girl and failed to intervene.
Ethan Paszko (https://copblaster.com/blast/34417/rochester-officer-ethan-paszko-idd-at-scene-of-pepper-sprayed-girl): Was standing in the middle of the road behind Lombard's car close enough to hear Schneeberger, but failed to intervene.
So far disciplinary action has only been taken against three of the officers. One was suspended and two others were placed on paid administrative leave. We believe that the suspended officer is either Schneeberger or Lombard. We are not sure because in Lombard's video we see him holding a can of pepper spray and Schneeberger shaking a can of pepper spray, but it seems like Lombard was following Schneeberger's lead and her attitude was certainly the worst. The other officer placed on leave was probably the first officer that arrived on the scene who may or may not have been Bradstreet.
We believe that further action is warranted. We would like to see Schneeberger and Lombard fired, charged with battery, and decertified. The officers that failed to intervene should at a minimum be suspended and required to undergo additional training. The additional training would need to focus on intervention so that the could never in the future cite a lack of training as an excuse for failing to intervene.
There were at least three other officers involved who were at the scene and failed to intervene. If you know their names please let us know.