Philadelphia Police officers are investigating several of their own officers after a video surfaces showing several officers kicking and beating three suspects after being pulled from a car during a traffic stop.
The scenes were caught on tape by a TV helicopter crew on Monday. The footage shows three police cars stopping a car. 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 and struck with a baton. The third man is also pulled out and kicked.
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 judgment''.
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 neighborhood, 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.
Video...
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/07/police.beating/#cnnSTCVideo\
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