As the investigation continues into two Montgomery County officers who allegedly helped federal immigration agents apprehend a Montgomery Village man six weeks ago, Latino residents used a forum with county leaders to describe a pattern of run-ins and perceived mistreatment by police.

Most of the stories told Thursday night at County Councilman Michael J. Knapp's forum at South Lake Elementary School echoed aspects of the Sept. 22 incident in Montgomery Village. The man in that incident says he was apprehended by county police without being charged with a crime and handed over to agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The incident has stoked suspicions in the immigrant community that officers are not abiding by a February policy that states that county police can refer people to ICE only when they are arrested and charged with specific violent crimes.

Most of the 50 residents expressed their fears at the forum, which Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown organized to hear first-hand experiences.

One man said an officer broke his license in half. Another said an officer threw his license into the trash.

Another man described how he was handcuffed on the street for an hour-and-a-half because an officer thought he had a gang-related tattoo. The tattoo is of his initials, the man said.

"What'd they stop me for, being Latino? No matter what you do, whether you do something right or something wrong, you're never going to come out well," the man said. "... And you know what's sad? It happens so often, I didn't think it was a big deal."

Their stories were translated into English for Knapp by Diego Uriburu, deputy executive director of Identity, a Gaithersburg-based nonprofit that works with at-risk youth.

"The point we're trying to make is how often these things happen, and the impunity some officers think they have because they know that in most cases, no one will ever know about it," Uriburu told Knapp. "The word spreads around and this community becomes more and more isolated."

Knapp (D-Dist. 2) of Germantown said that such encounters are more a reflection of law enforcement's ongoing struggle to figure out the best response to gangs.

"No one's figured that out well, and unfortunately, racial profiling happens — it shouldn't, but it does," he said.

Meanwhile, the Montgomery Village man is home on electronic monitoring pending a decision by federal authorities on whether to grant him a special visa while he cooperates with the police investigation.

Federal immigration authorities stayed the man's deportation two weeks ago and released him from a detention center in Pennsylvania, where he was being processed for deportation to his native El Salvador.

The man — who had a deportation order against him at the time of the incident — believes he was handed over to ICE in retaliation for an earlier complaint in which he said Marshall accused him of being a gang member and lost his driver's license in July.

He also alleged that he was assaulted by a different officer during the Sept. 22 incident.

The police probe has focused on Officers David Marshall and Scott Zimmerman, who were assigned as gang investigators at the county's 6th District station in Gaithersburg.

Police procedures give Chief J. Thomas Manger 90 days to weigh recommendations and issue his findings, said Capt. Paul Starks, a police spokesman. Only the officers and the complainant are told of the findings.

However, Manger has said that he will be "very forthcoming" once appropriate.

Marshall, Zimmerman and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35 have declined to discuss the case. The officers have been on active duty throughout the probe, Starks said — Marshall on patrol beat in the 6th district while Zimmerman took a temporary assignment last week at the police academy.

The assignment changes were not related to the investigation, Starks said.