BALTIMORE — The trial for a Baltimore County officer accused of assaulting a handcuffed suspect when he pepper-sprayed him in the face last year began Tuesday in city court.

Cpl. Zachary Small, 52, is charged with second-degree assault, reckless endangerment, violating public safety and misconduct related to the Sept. 27 arrest of a man suspected of armed robbery.

Body-camera video released by the county police department earlier this year captured the arrest in Baltimore City near Johns Hopkins Hospital, where the suspect escaped police custody after receiving treatment.

After fleeing officers in the hospital and snapping his shackles, the man ran out of the hospital’s ambulance bay. Baltimore City officers quickly found him hiding in a backyard, handcuffed his hands behind his back and placed him in a squad car. Eventually, Small and other county officers arrived.

“That’s when things went a little south,” Assistant State’s Attorney Kimberly Rothwell said in her opening statement Tuesday.

After he was moved into a county police SUV, the man’s knee blocked the door, initially preventing Small from closing him inside. Then he complained he was too hot and that he couldn’t breathe, and began banging on the car’s window. After warning the man, Small shot pepper-spray into the man’s face, including his mouth and nose, “seven to nine” times, Rothwell said, then closed the door again.

When the man resumed banging on the door, Small opened the door, grabbed the man and threw him onto the ground, the body-camera video showed.

“He takes his hair as if he’s a dog on a leash, he grabs the roots of this man’s hair,” Rothwell said.

The video shows him gripping the man’s hair and using it to lift his head and neck up off the ground.

Small did not provide medical aid to the man or call for any, and instead ordered him sent to a police precinct.

Prosecutors say that Small’s actions during the arrest violated Baltimore County’s use of force policies and criminal law. The assault charge refers to the pepper spraying and pulling the man’s hair, while Rothwell said spraying the handcuffed man’s face so many times constituted excessive force.

“You asked for it. Just remember this. I warned you,” Small said in the footage, after pepper spraying the man in the face.

Defense attorneys for Small described the man suspected of carrying out a string of commercial armed robberies as a violent criminal who repeatedly lied to officers.

The man, who prosecutors intend to call as a witness, is set to stand trial for armed robbery, theft and second-degree assault in Baltimore County in October. He was charged with second-degree escape in connection with the September incident, but that count was placed on the stet docket, meaning prosecutors can revive it in the future.

The man was taken to the hospital after his arrest for a gunshot wound, which Small’s attorney Brian Thompson called “almost certainly a lie and a ruse” to avoid jail.

When Baltimore County Police Officer Justin Graham-Moore walked across the hallway to the nurse’s station in response to the man’s request for food and pain medication, the suspect took the opportunity to escape from the exam room, Thompson said.

Hospital video showed a man sprinting down the hallway out of view, followed by the Baltimore County officer.

Thompson argued that the late September weather was cool, in the high 60s, not so hot that the man would overheat in the back of the police SUV.

“[He] lies again and says the magic words, ‘I can’t breathe,’ ‘I can’t breathe,” Thompson said.

A 2022 training for Baltimore County officers advised using pepper spray in situations where a suspect fails to comply with orders or is physically aggressive. Law enforcement experts consider pepper spray to be a lower level of force since it doesn’t usually cause lasting injury.

Small’s sergeant initially reviewed his actions and found he had acted within department policy for using force.

Baltimore County Capt. Michael Fruhling, the Wilkens precinct commander, testified Tuesday that when he first looked at the body-camera video, he thought the incident was “ugly” but that he was “okay with it for now.”

Later, the captain wrote in a Nov. 22, 2023 memo to then-Maj. Orlando Lilly that Small’s use of force had been unnecessary. Fuhrling said Tuesday he changed his mind after watching the video more closely.

“I didn’t think when the suspect was handcuffed in the back of a police car it was proportional and effectuating a law enforcement end,” he said Tuesday, both requirements for using force under the department’s policy.

Asked by Thompson if Small’s actions in the arrest had violated the law, Fruhling said no.

A grand jury first indicted Small on an additional charge of first-degree assault, but Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said at a news conference in February that he decided the state would not be able to prove the felony charge.

“I did feel like there would be some evidentiary issues in proving first-degree assault, so I made the call to dismiss first-degree assault,” Bates said then.

Three other county officers face charges of misconduct in office for failing to intervene in the incident. Trials for Graham-Moore and Officer Jacob Roos are set for later this month. The trial for a fourth officer, Thomas Desmond, who was indicted later, is scheduled for December.

Small joined the Baltimore County Police department two decades ago.

In 2006, the department found Small had assaulted another officer while off duty and consequentially took away 20 days of leave, according to a summary of his disciplinary record obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request.

President Barack Obama honored Small and two other officers at a White House ceremony in 2011 for carrying a man out of a burning house.

In 2013, he shot and injured a woman who was pointing a gun replica at officers.

More recently, the department took away five days of leave after he participated in a motor vehicle pursuit in 2020 that violated department policy, according to his discipline record.

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