A police officer for New York City’s Department of Homeless Services was suspended on Wednesday after a video circulated online showing the officer hitting a migrant in the face, the city said.
The unidentified officer was seen arguing with a 21-year-old migrant from Venezuela inside a shelter at the Bedford-Atlantic Armory in Brooklyn. Meiver Martinez, the migrant, is seen yelling at the officer repeatedly in Spanish, “Don’t hit me,” in the video before he is seen kicking a nearby locker and the officer proceeds to slap him, according to the New York Times.
“We do not tolerate any violence or misconduct against our clients,” the department said in a statement.
DEMOCRATIC MAYORS KEEP PILING BORDER PRESSURE ON BIDEN ADMINISTRATION
“Dont hit me” he says.
Emergency presser 2 PM mens shelter at Atlantic/Bedford. Live on instagram on either South Bronx Mutual Aid or NYCICEwatch’s account.
Conferencia de Prensa 2 PM esquina de Atlantic/Bedford. En vivo en Instagram en las cuentas mencionados arriba. pic.twitter.com/lE9BXFntRv
— The Looted Futures Generation (@PeoplesHistory) September 7, 2022
The department also stated it is conducting “a full investigation” and is “cooperating with the district attorney’s office” as part of it, according to the statement.
Martinez, who arrived in New York a month ago, claimed that he returned to the shelter at about 6 a.m. on Wednesday after working an eight-hour shift cleaning a school and that the shelter staff had allowed him to go to bed. He was then woken two hours later by the officer, who started pounding on the locker when Martinez was taking too long to get out of bed, he told the outlet.
“I said to the officer, ‘If I stay sitting here, what’s going to happen?’” He said. “And he starts hitting my back.”
Martinez added that shortly after being hit by the officer, about eight officers jumped on him, beat him up, and used a stun gun on him three times. He was taken away in an ambulance in handcuffs and was treated at a hospital, he said.
New York City has been experiencing an immigration crisis since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began shuttling immigrants to both the Big Apple and Washington, D.C. A delegation of New York City officials made an unannounced trip to the U.S.-Mexico border over the Labor Day weekend, stopping in the Eagle Pass and Del Rio region, where more migrants are being encountered attempting to enter the United States than any other part of the 2,000-mile boundary.
Texas has offered to host New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser, who are both Democrats, for a comprehensive tour of the border and to see the impact of the influx of up to 6,000 illegal immigrants being apprehended in Texas daily for the past 18 months. On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for Abbott accused Adams of dodging the immigration crisis by sending his staff to the southern border in his place.
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New York City “will continue to welcome asylum-seekers with open arms as we learn more about the process, meet with real partners, and see firsthand the reportedly inhumane conditions in which asylum-seekers are being subjected to by the state of Texas,” a spokesperson for Adams’s office told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday
The Washington Examiner has contacted both Adams’s office and the city’s Department of Homeless Services for comment.
