Video has emerged of a chaotic scene at a migrant shelter in Queens on Friday during which an NYPD officer is seen firing his stun gun at a man while he is holding his toddler son. The man is later arrested after being restrained by multiple officers.
In the footage, which was obtained by the New York Times, two officers can be seen struggling with Yanny Cordero, a migrant from Venezuela, who has his back to a pair of closed elevator doors. Other migrants and a pair of men in military fatigues are standing by as the altercation continues. Things escalate as one officer draws his stun gun, uses it against Cordero, and appears to hit him in the head.
Additional officers intervene and pull him from the elevators, forcing him down on a nearby desk after removing Cordero’s 1-year-old son from his arms. His wife, Andrea Parra, can be heard screaming and attempts several times to put herself between her husband and the officers, only to be pulled away.
Andry Barreto, a Venezuelan migrant who recorded the video, can be heard yelling in Spanish, “This is abuse, brother!” and “Don’t hit him! Don’t hit him!” as officers hold Cordero down and strike him multiple times, after which he tumbles to the ground.
Cordero, who has been staying at the shelter since December, tells the Times that the incident began when he returned to the building Friday evening after buying food for his family. He claims employees at the shelter stopped him from taking food up to his room and that, as he struggled to use a translator on his phone, one of the employees suddenly hit him in the face. They later called the authorities.
Both Cordero and his wife were arrested, with Cordero facing charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, among others. The couple told the outlet that their three sons, including their 1-year-old, were briefly taken into custody by the Administration for Children’s Services but were returned to them Monday following the parents’ Saturday release.
During his weekly press availability Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams said he spoke to NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban over the weekend about the incident which was reportedly captured on the officers’ body-worn cameras.
The mayor defended the officers’ actions that evening, saying that Cordero was drunk at the time of the altercation, something he denied to the Times. “This person was under the influence of alcohol, holding a child. Those officers had to get that child from him so that child was not going to be in danger,” Adams said.
Adams said the officers asked Cordero to hand over his son multiple times, but that he refused. “He was violent. He was volatile. They had to take that necessary action. Based on our review, those officers took appropriate action,” he said.
This is far from the first altercation between migrants and members of law enforcement at a city shelter. Last September, the City reported that officers conducted a raid on a shelter in Brooklyn in order to confiscate unregistered mopeds. Videos from that day show officers using stun guns and roughly shoving migrants in the crowd that formed. In January, a scene outside a Times Square shelter became a national political story as migrants were seen fighting with officers. Subsequent video revealed significant disparities from the official accounts of the incident that alleged the incident started when migrants refused an order to leave a sidewalk.
