TV helicopter films police beating suspects

May 7, 2008 – 8:37 am

Police authorities in the US city of Philadelphia are investigating a video showing officers kicking and beating three suspects pulled from a car during a traffic stop.

The scenes were caught on tape by a TV helicopter crew of local network WTXF-TV on Monday.

The footage shows three police cars stopping a car on a city street, two days after a city officer responding to a bank robbery was fatally shot.

About a dozen officers are seen gathering around the vehicle and pulling three men out. Some of the officers hold two of the men on the ground.

Both are then kicked repeatedly, while one is seen being punched - one also appears to be struck with a baton. The third man is also kicked and ends up on the ground.

The city’s police commissioner on Tuesday said the video ”certainly does not look good”, but stressed the force did not want to ”rush to judgement”.

The officers were responding to a report of a shooting nearby, police said.

The commissioner told reporters that the suspects ”had been observed involved at a triple shooting at the time”.

Philadelphia officers have been on edge since Saturday, when an officer was fatally shot with an assault rifle after a robbery.

One of the robbery suspects was fatally shot by police, another was arrested on Sunday and a third remains on the run.

The officer was the third one slain on duty in the city in the last two years.

An attorney for one of the men said he did not know what preceded the traffic stop in the city’s Hunting Park neighbourhood, but that the video showed an unjustified police beating.

He went on to say that police told him all three men would be charged with aggravated assault.

Source: NDTV