By Thomas Tracy and Chris Sommerfeldt
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — Startling video shows a group of NYPD cops being attacked by migrants at a shelter on Randall’s Island.
Migrants surrounded about five uniformed officers and threw bottles and debris at them as the cops tried to apprehend a disorderly man inside the shelter last Thursday, the video shows.
At one point, someone hurls a backpack, striking a cop in her head with it. A few moments later, a shelter resident with crutches tries to poke an officer.
Shelter residents are seen screaming at the officers in Spanish. Cops are holding up their batons to deflect the objects being thrown at them.
Cops were called to the shelter around 11 a.m. when a man began arguing with security guards and was “acting in a disorderly fashion,” an NYPD spokesman said.
The man, wearing a white T-shirt, was not a shelter resident, a source said.
In the video, the man sits on the floor while he’s surrounded by officers and struggles with cops who are trying to handcuff him, inflaming witnesses watching the arrest.
By the end of the two-minute clip, shelter security guards are called in to surround the officers, who pick up the struggling man and remove him from the tent shelter.
“Security! Surround the cops! Surround the cops!” someone can be heard yelling off camera.
None of the officers were injured, police said. It wasn’t immediately clear if the man taken into custody was charged.
The video is another example of the ongoing strife between police and the city’s migrant population.
The division has become a lightning rod for criticism over the already-polarizing migrant crisis in New York City, with calls for the migrants involved in such incidents to be deported.
On Jan. 27, a group of migrants was caught on surveillance camera beating on an NYPD lieutenant and cop outside a migrant shelter in Times Square.
On Jan. 27, a group of migrants was caught on surveillance camera beating on an NYPD lieutenant and a cop outside a migrant shelter in Times Square. As of Feb. 14, eight migrants have been arrested for assaulting those officers.
The Randall’s Island shelter is the city’s biggest facility to house asylum seekers coming into New York. It can hold up to 3,000 people.
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