NYPD officers are under investigation after they used a taser on a Venezuelan migrant while he held his one-year-old-son in his arms, as seen on footage published by The New York Times.
Police were called to a migrant shelter in Jamaica, Queens, on Friday night over reports of an intoxicated man who was threatening staff members.
Video of the confrontation shows two officers trying to restrain Yanny Cordero, 47, as he is backed against a closed elevator door with his child in his arms.
One officer is then seen pulling out a yellow stun gun before he appears to point it and Cordero, striking him. The officer then punches Cordero in the head.
Once the officers manage to separate Cordero from the child, they pin his head against a desk. A third officer is then seen punching Cordero twice in the face.
Yanny Cordero, 47, is seen with his wife Andrea Parra. Both were arrested after a confrontation with police that was recorded by a bystander
As the confrontation rages on, the man recording the video is heard yelling in Spanish: ‘This is abuse, brother! Don’t hit him! Don’t hit him, brother! That’s abuse! Where are the human rights?’
The footage does not show the moments leading up to the physical confrontation.
Both Cordero and his wife Andrea Parra were arrested after the confrontation. He said he had not been drinking that night and that the dispute began when a shelter worker hit him in the face as he struggled to communicate in English.
The NYPD told the Times that the officers gave Cordero multiple warnings and orders to hand the child to someone else.
Cordero is charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and violent behavior, obstructing government administration and acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17.
Parra, 23, was also charged in the incident. She can be seen on the video throwing herself between her husband and the officers.
Cordero said he had not been drinking that night and that the dispute began when a shelter worker hit him in the face as he struggled to communicate in English
The couple’s three kids were taken by the Administration for Children’s Services, but they have since been reunited with their parents, who were released from jail on Saturday.
The family has moved to a shelter in Brooklyn.
While police have said one-year-old Yusneide, was not harmed, Cordero said the child was ‘trembling and he pooped and peed himself.’
DailyMail.com has reached out to the NYPD for comment on this story.
On Tuesday mayor Eric Adams stood by the police officers, saying Cordero was ‘violent.’
‘This person was under the influence of alcohol, holding a child,’ the Democrat added. ‘Those officers had to get that child from him so that child was not going to be in danger.’
The Big Apple has been inundated with an influx of migrants that the mayor’s office has estimated will cost taxpayers $10.6 billion over three fiscal years
More than 180,000 migrants have arrived in New York since spring of 2022 costing the city billions of dollars in social welfare provision
Migrants pick up clothes as mutual aid groups distribute food and clothes under cold weather near the Migrant Assistance Center at St. Brigid Elementary School last month in New York
Increasingly, New York City officials have aimed dire rhetoric at the tens of thousands of asylum seekers the city has put up in shelters and hotels over the past year. Some of the comments have dismayed immigration advocates, who say they are stirring up hatred over the actions of a few bad apples.
‘A wave of migrant crime has washed over our city,’ Police Commissioner Edward Caban said at a news conference about a Venezuelan man being sought in a series of cell phone robberies.
Adams has noted the vast majority of the nearly 175,000 migrants who have come to the city are law abiding. He said it would be wrong for ‘any New Yorker to look at people trying to fulfill the next step on the American Dream as criminal.’
But in recent days, Adams has also shown a willingness to pull back on a set of laws that often block the city from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement efforts.
‘We need to modify the sanctuary city law that if you commit a felony or violent act we should be able to turn you over to ICE and have you deported,’ he told a town hall meeting last month.
Since 2014, the police department and city jails have been barred from holding people in custody on behalf of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement unless they have been convicted of certain violent crimes and a judge has issued a warrant for their removal.
Federal immigration authorities don’t have a presence in the city’s jail system. City resources aren’t supposed to be used to assist in the detention and deportation process.