When we watched the video footage of a mother being body slammed while holding her three year old daughter's hand we recognized Rochester Police Officer Ethan Paszko right away. We had just written an article about Paszko the month before after he failed to intervene while fellow officer Alexander Lombard pepper sprayed a 9 year old girl at the direction of Officer Hannah Schneeberger, but still found the time to pick up Schneeberger's can of pepper spray and hand it to her after she dropped it (https://copblaster.com/blast/34417/rochester-officer-ethan-paszko-idd-at-scene-of-pepper-sprayed-girl). To eliminate our doubts we watched the part of the video from last month over again, compared him to the officer in the video below, and reviewed media reports that two of the officers involved in the recent body slamming of a black mother with a kid which mentioned that two of the officers involved were also involved in the pepper spraying of the 9 year old. We identified officer Dakota Vanbrederode (https://copblaster.com/blast/34454/rpd-officer-dakota-vanbrederode-idd-at-scene-of-body-slammed-mom) as the second officer on the scene and also identified him as a previously unidentified officer in the video of the 9 year old being pepper sprayed. We also did not see any other officers in the video below that were present at the pepper spraying of the 9 year old last month. When we did a Google search for Ethan Paszko we noticed that Free The People Rochester identified him as the body slammer on Instagram a few days ago (https://www.instagram.com/p/CMDatOHhtXk/) probably because they recognized him from last month's footage like we did. We tried to locate Paszko's name in the video below, but he is wearing a different type of nametag than the one he wore last month, so it was difficult for us to find a frame in which it could be read, but we did notice parts of letters from his name at times, plus none of the other officers involved remotely resemble any officers from the incident with the 9 year old and this guy is a dead ringer for Ethan Paszko.
Defenders of the Rochester Police Department (RPD) are quick to point out that the victim in this case ran away from officer Paszko with her daughter in her arms and ignored his commands. We are going to concede those points and assume for the purpose of our analysis that she was not cooperating with Officer Paszko. Just because someone is not cooperative or is resisting does not justify using excessive force to compel their compliance. Paszko's body camera is not a good source of information in this case because it was conveniently knocked off his body at the most critical time. Ironic since the same thing happened with Adam Bradstreet's camera while he was using force on a 9 year old last month. That could be a coincidence, but it looks more likely that either the RPD fails to attach body cams to uniforms properly on a regular basis or RPD officers conveniently knock their body cameras off their bodies when they think thy might not like what will be recorded. The best footage comes from the surveillance camera from the convenience store beginning at 1:23:45. The footage begins with Paszko struggling with the woman while the child keeps trying to get close to her mother. Paszko then slams the woman on the ground and the child runs to her before grabbing her hand. Officer Vanbrederode arrives on the scene, grabs the child, and tries to hold her back from her mother. Then the mother managed to get off the ground and grab her daughter's hand. At that point Paszko grabbed her and slammed her on the ground while she was holding her daughter's hand. That action was most disturbing because the child was lucky not to be taken to the ground with her mother. Officer Vanbrederode managed to hold onto the child so the worst that happened was a brief tug of war before the mother was forced to let go. Officer Paszko's actions showed a deliberate indifference for the well being of the child. A grown man does not need to body slam a mother that is holding the hand of a three year old child twice just to arrest her.
In addition to the body slamming it also seems that Officer Paszko pepper sprayed her. We could not locate the exact time when this pepper spraying occurred, but we do believe that it happened for two reasons. The first reason is that she complains about being pepper sprayed several times and at one point is allowed to rinse out her eyes at a drinking fountain. The second reason is that at 38:50 Officer Vanbrederode complaints to her that he too was pepper sprayed by Paszko, "when he sprayed you, my head was like right next to yours." Since Paszko and Vanbrederode were the only two officers on the scene when the struggle took place it does not take long to figure out that when Vanbrederode said "he" that "he" was Paszko.
Interim Police Chief Cynthia Herriott-Sullivan has repeatedly refused requests to place Officer Paszko on leave. Instead she has restricted him to "administrative duty. For a cop being restricted to a desk is the next best thing to a paid vacation. An internal investigation is also pending.
According to pubic records, Ethan B. Paszko is a 25 year old resident of Scottsville, New York, a suburb of Rochester. He is originally from Churchville, another suburb of Rochester. He is a registered Republican with no criminal record. According to GovSalaries he made $75,626 as a patrol officer last year (https://govsalaries.com/paszko-ethan-90977200). He listed himself on LinkedIn as a former student at Grove City College who was an intern with the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF).