Brallan Perez Allarcon was dismayed last summer by the presence of U.S Immigration and Custom Enforcement agents in Spring Valley. A close friend had been arrested and deported to Guatemala and Perez Alarcon feared the same could happen to him.
But was he truly threatening federal law enforcement on Sept. 20 when he called Ramapo and Spring Valley police to say he would shoot and kill any ICE agents if they knocked on his door?
That will be for a jury to decide as early as Wednesday afternoon, June 3, when Perez Alarcon’s trial wraps up in U.S. District Court in White Plains.
Prosecutors insist he is guilty of the single charge of threatening to assault a federal law enforcement officer, that he not only called and made the threats but doubled down on them when a Ramapo cop called him back to gauge how serious he was.
“They took him seriously,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Isabelle Lelogeais said of police in her opening statement. “They believed he posed a real threat.”
But Perez Alarcon’s defense maintains he was so “profoundly intoxicated” during the phone calls that he couldn’t have formed a simple sentence let alone hatch a plan to kill ICE agents.
“Drunken stupidity is not a federal crime,” one of his lawyers, Ben Gold, told the jury.
Opening statements and testimony took just one day. Prosecutors called the Ramapo dispatcher and Spring Valley police officer who answered two of Perez Alarcon’s eight calls, and those calls were played for the jury. They also called Ramapo Lt. Christopher Youngman who took steps to check whether Perez Alarcon had a gun and to make sure he could not get one.
Youngman also assigned Officer Philip Campbell to call Perez Alarcon back, saying he did not feel it was safe for police to go to his home. Campbell’s call was not recorded but the officer testified that Perez Alarcon reiterated the threat and told him he didn’t have a gun but could get one.
Perez Alarcon later testified that he drank all day Sept. 19 and started up again the following morning after waking up and taking a shower. He doesn’t know how many beers he had but that it was at least 48 bottles of Corona and Modelo because two cases of 24 were empty by the middle of the next day.
He repeatedly said he did not remember specifically what he said in the phone calls because he was so drunk. But he acknowledged that, once he heard the audio of the calls, he had made the remarks attributed to him.
Gold asked if he was proud of what he heard on those recordings.
“I think what I said to the authorities was horrible,” Perez Alarcon answered. “I feel ashamed for what I said.”
The prosecution sought to convince jurors that Perez Alarcon was not so drunk that he lacked the necessary intent to threaten agents.
On cross examination, he acknowledged that he didn’t just call 911 but that he dialed the main number of each police department. He also acknowledged that when the Ramapo police dispatcher suggested he call Spring Valley police, he did so. And he wasn’t too drunk to answer the phone when the Ramapo officer called him back.
Perrez Alarcon’s partner and her son testified that he was often drunk and appeared that way on Sept. 20 as well. She said that when she returned home from work that afternoon, he told her that he had called police to complain about ICE. But she was not asked by either side whether he had discussed the specific threat he made.
After the prosecution’s case, Gold asked for the charge to be dismissed, insisting Perez Alarcon’s words did not rise to the level of a “true threat” unprotected by the First Amendment right to free speech. He also said that his client had not intended to “interfere, impede, intimidate or retaliate” against law enforcement as required for a conviction.
The prosecution countered that his anger about ICE activity in Spring Valley made the threat one of retaliation.
U.S. District Judge Nelson Roman reserved decision, saying he will let the case go to the jury. Closing arguments are Wednesday morning.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Spring Valley man goes on trial over calls to police threatening ICE
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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