Police officers used stun gun on migrants holding toddler, video shows

New York City officials are investigating a confrontation at a city-run shelter in Queens where police officers struck and used a stun gun on a Venezuelan migrant as he held his 1-year-old son.

Video footage obtained by The New York Times shows two police officers, who were called to the shelter Friday evening due to a dispute, trying to restrain the man, Yanny Cordero, 47, as he stands with his back against a closed elevator door in the shelter . , holding his child tightly in his arms.

One of the officers pulls out a yellow stun gun and appears to stun Mr. Cordero before punching him in the head, the video shows.

The officers continue to restrain Mr. Cordero after separating him from his son, pressing his head against a desk as they try to wrestle him to the ground. A third officer becomes involved and punches Mr. Cordero twice in the face before the officers subdue and arrest him.

“This is abuse, brother!” a man who recorded the video on his phone is heard shouting in Spanish. ‘Don’t hit him! Don’t hit him! Don’t hit him, brother! That’s abuse! Where are the human rights?”

Police responded to a call about an argument involving an intoxicated man threatening staff members. They said officers at the scene gave Mr. Cordero multiple warnings and commands to hand the child over to someone else.

Mr. Cordero said he did not drink that night because he had to work the next day. He said the dispute began when he returned to the shelter, in the Jamaican borough of Queens, with dinner for his family. A shelter worker punched him in the face near the elevators as he struggled to communicate in English, he said.

Mr. Cordero was charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and violent conduct, obstruction of governmental administration and acting in a manner harmful to a child under 17 years of age. Police also arrested his wife, Andrea Parra, 23, who appears in the video. threw her body between her husband and the police officers.

The couple said that when they were arrested, their 1-year-old son, Yusneide, and their two other boys, ages 3 and 5, were taken by the city’s child welfare agency, the Administration for Children’s Services.

Mr Cordero and Ms Parra were released on Saturday evening, almost 24 hours after the altercation, and were reunited with their children on Monday evening. The family was taken to a shelter in Brooklyn.

“We are aware of an incident involving a family in our care at an emergency shelter in Jamaica, Queens, Friday evening,” a City Hall spokeswoman said in a statement. “The health and safety of all immigrants and long-time New Yorkers in our care – especially young children – is always the highest priority, and this matter is currently under investigation.”

Police said Yusneide was unharmed, but Mr Cordero said he believed the altercation had affected him.

“He was shaking and pooping and peeing on himself,” Mr. Cordero said in an interview.

Police did not respond to questions about whether they believed officers handled the situation appropriately and did not provide footage from their body-worn cameras.

It is not clear from the two-and-a-half-minute video what happened immediately before the clash at the shelter, one of dozens of city-run shelters housing the nearly 65,000 migrants in the city’s care.

As the number of migrants housed by the city has skyrocketed, city officials have begun imposing more restrictions on the hotels, shelters and tent dormitories where they are staying.

The city has imposed curfews at a handful of shelters following neighborhood complaints and several high-profile crimes involving migrants. Last month the police arrested a migrant for disorderly conduct at a giant tent shelter on Randall’s Island after a confrontation with police.

Mr. Cordero, an electrician in his home country who has worked construction jobs since arriving in New York, said he left the shelter Friday evening around 10 p.m. to buy food because his family did not like what was being served at the shelter. served. .

He said his wife was left with the three children in their room at the shelter, where they had been staying since December.

Mr. Cordero, who does not speak English, said that when he returned to the lobby with the food, a shelter employee near the elevators appeared to tell him in English that he could not take the food to the room, an unwritten shelter policy . to reduce contamination, city officials said. (Some migrants at the shelter said in interviews that staff members routinely threw away food and drinks found in rooms.)

Mr. Cordero said he used a translation app on his phone to tell the employee that he was going to the cafeteria to eat the meat and rice he bought and that his family would come to him.

Mr. Cordero said the employee called a colleague, who he said seemed to become hostile as Mr. Cordero had difficulty communicating with the phone app. The second shelter worker, Mr. Cordero said, suddenly punched him in the face.

Mr. Cordero said he did not hit back, but instead put his hands behind his back and began taunting the employee in Spanish to hit him again while he was defenseless, challenging him to a fight outside.

Andry Barreto, the Venezuelan migrant who shot the video, corroborated Mr. Cordero’s story, saying in an interview that he looked outside through a window into the shelter’s lobby and saw the worker hit Mr. Cordero.

City officials did not immediately respond to questions about the shelter workers’ behavior.

Mr Barreto, who is also the children’s godfather, said he went inside and started recording on his phone when the situation began to escalate.

The employees called the police, Mr. Cordero and Mr. Barreto said. Mr. Cordero’s wife, Ms. Parra, showed up with the three children around the time the police arrived, and she gave Yusneide to Mr. Cordero to hold.

At one point, Mr Cordero is heard screaming in the video as he clings to Yusneide, and as other migrants shout: “The baby! The baby!” in Spanish.

Mr. Cordero said police sedated him several times, but he said he didn’t feel much of it.

“I never raised my hand,” Mr. Cordero said. “I never told the police anything other than not to touch my child.”

Mr. Cordero and Ms. Parra said that after they were released from custody, they were only allowed to speak to their children via video call. The couple visited several city offices on Sunday to pick them up.

On Tuesday, Mr Cordero said he was happy his children were back, but was upset that they had been put in danger.

“I feel very sad because my children experienced something they should never have experienced,” Mr. Cordero said. “We are poor, but we have raised them well to avoid these kinds of spectacles.”