Exclusive: Teen Accuses FIU Police Chief of Choking Him

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – A police chief's encounter with three teenage boys led to a serious allegation.

It began as a warning over trespassing but ended in a physical confrontation.

One of those teens is accusing Florida International University Police Chief Alex Casas of pushing and choking him.

Surveillance video, released to CBS4 shows three teenage boys with skateboards speaking with Chief Casas on the roof of parking garage 5, next to the police station on FIU's main campus Sunday night.

The video then cuts to the teens and the chief parting ways. What it doesn't show, is what happened in between.

Matthew Carrillo says while ordering them to leave the property Chief Casas choked him, unprovoked.

"He put his arm across my chest like that, and with his other hand he put it on my neck and he was like pushing me up against the wall," Carrillo told CBS4's Natalia Zea.

CLICK HERE To Watch Natalia Zea's Report 

He says when the chief let him go, he recorded the rest of the encounter on his phone.

"Once I started taking the video, his tone immediately changed" said Carrillo.

Chief Casas appears very calm in the video, responding to questions from Carrillo on his friends and denying their assertion that he had just choked Carrillo.

The Chief turned down our requests for an interview, and said in the police report that he only "placed his hand and forearm on the male's upper chest."

He says he was concerned for his safety when Matthew "proceeded to stand up, grabbing the skateboard behind his back."

Carrillo bristled when he heard the chief's account in the report.

"The skateboard was never in my hands. I'd call him a liar," he said.

Carrillo's mother Tatiana and the other teens and their mothers went to the police department to pick up the skateboards that same night.

She says the chief put her in a room alone and immediately brought up the choking allegation.

She said the chief told her, "'I'm sure your son told him that I choked him, in no way I choked him, did you see any marks on his neck?'"

She also says he warned her to delete the video Matthew took on his cell phone.

"He told me the video he had, he better erase because it would jeopardize him if it went on Facebook and all the media, that it would jeopardize him and his friends," she said.

She says she did not ask exactly how it would put them in jeopardy.

Tatiana says she believed the chief's account, until an anonymous caller reached out to her the next day saying her son told the truth.

"(He said) That what happened, that he was choked, that what happened did happen, that the chief of police did put his hand on his neck. That what he was doing was illegal, that he was not following procedures, that he was not following the proper protocol. The person said 'I was not there, but I know what happened, I saw what happened.'"

She added, "I feel horrible that I didn't believe my son. It makes me upset that I didn't believe what he was telling me and that I took the word of an officer of the law."

She now plans to pursue legal action against Chief Casas.

"I think we need to do something about it, I really do. I think he needs to be taught a lesson, he wants to try to teach kids a lesson, he needs to be taught a lesson because not all kids are bad."

Tatiana has now retained an attorney who is demanding that the FDLE and the State Attorney investigate the incident.

CBS4 News requested the video from the more than a dozen cameras on the roof of the garage to see exactly what happened during the incident Sunday night. FIU released two camera angles. When pressed, they said they would work to release the rest Monday.