HOUSTON – A man in northwest Harris County said he was wrongfully tased and detained by Harris County Precinct 1 deputy constables.
FIEL, a group advocating for immigrants’ rights, sent KPRC 2 the videos. KPRC 2 sent them to Constable Alan Rosen’s Office Friday afternoon. He said he hadn’t seen the videos yet but is opening an internal investigation.
Nerry Portillo, the man in the video, said he was picking up trash in his friend’s yard when he was tased and pushed down by deputies. He said he didn’t know what was going on because he doesn’t speak English.
“He said, ‘Stand up, stand back up because somebody is talking to you,’ because I was bending over picking up trash,” Portillo said.
FIEL held a news conference on behalf of Portillo on Friday morning. Portillo said he is visiting family and friends at the northwest Harris County home. He said last Sunday, he was caught in the middle of long long-standing feud between the two neighbors and didn’t know why deputies were shouting at him.
“We’re assuming maybe that the neighbor said that there was a terroristic threat made or something, which is part of what we are trying to ask Precinct 1 constables, is where that came from and what was the call made,” Cesar Espinosa, the executive director of FIEL said.
A second video showed Portillo on the ground — you can see deputies trying to handcuff him and continuing to give commands in English. After the family continues to yell he doesn’t speak English, one of the deputies speaks to Portillo in Spanish.
“They took out his change and took out a pack of cigarettes and asked him, ‘Where’s the weapon?’” Espinosa said.
KPRC 2 asked Constable Rosen about the protocols for giving commands in Spanish.
“If the officer knows Spanish, most likely they will give it in English first and Spanish second,” he said.
The video shows that was not the case before Portillo was tased. Though it’s unclear if the deputy who pulled the trigger speaks Spanish, Constable Rosen did confirm another deputy on the scene does know Spanish.
“We are told that victim said that suspect kept pulling behind his back, pulling his waistband and he had a garbage bag or a clear bag that he kept reaching inside,” Rosen said. “I am not going to allow any citizen to be mistreated in any way by this department.”