TV footage shows police beating suspects

TV footage shows police beating suspects

Philadelphia police, in shock over Saturday's murder of one of their own, are facing a probe over the violent beating of three shooting suspects by up to 15 officers - an arrest captured on video by a news helicopter hovering overhead.

The beating, Monday night in North Philadelphia, is seen on roughly one minute of an 11-minute video that Fox29 broadcast early today and streamed over its Web site.

Mayor Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey today promised a full investigation of the beating, which the commissioner said might be related to the stress police personnel are under as they hunt for the fugitive wanted in Saturday's murder of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski.

Ramsey said the officers in the Fox29 video would be taken off street duty as soon as they were identified.

Although police did not identify the three suspects in the video, Center City lawyer D. Scott Perrine announced today that he would represent all three at their bail hearings on charges to be lodged against them.

Perrine identified one suspect as one of his long-standing clients, Dwayne Dyches, 24, and Brian Hall and Pete Hopkins.

Perrine said they had been chased and apprehended without probable cause and called the beating "police conduct that should have stopped in the 1970s."

"This was one of the most reprehensible displays of police brutality I have ever seen," he said.

Perrine said all three required hospital treatment. He said Dyches has a "baseball-size" lump and cut over one eye and was having difficulty moving one leg.

"He had to have two officers helping him to walk out of the hospital," Perrine said.

Police did not comment on the suspects' conditions and injuries.

The video shows police cars chasing a gold sedan to a stop in the 3700 block of North Second Street.

Other police cars keep arriving. About six to eight officers, with guns drawn, swarm over the sedan, pulling open the driver's door. As more officers race up to the car, one beats the passenger's side with a baton.

All four doors are pulled open, and as each of the three men is pulled from the car, he is tossed to the street and surrounded by three to five officers.

A group of about three or four officers begin trying to handcuff the driver and can be seen delivering at least 13 kicks to the suspect's head and sides as well as several punches.

The passenger pulled from the rear seat is also kicked by a group of four officers as well as being struck four or five times by an officer who appears to be wielding a baton.

A canine officer stands nearby restraining an excited police dog.

The beating of the two suspects takes up a minute of the video. The remaining 10 minutes show officers rolling the suspects as they search their pockets, search the vehicle, and, ultimately, take them away in separate patrol vehicles.

Lt. Frank Vanore, a police spokesman, said Nutter and Ramsey viewed the Fox29 video at the studio and ordered an investigation of the incident.

"We realize that our officers are all under an excess of stress right now, but we still have to do our job in a professional manner," Vanore said. "There's really no excuse for this."

In the meantime, Vanore said Ramsey has restricted police shifts to 12 hours and will encourage officers and their superiors to use department counseling services if they are have difficulty dealing with stress.

Vanore, however, maintained that all three men will be charged with participating in the shooting earlier Monday night at Fourth and Annsbury Streets in Hunting Park that wounded three people.

Vanore said police had visual contact with the three men and the gold 2000 Mercury Marquis sedan from the moment it arrived at the scene of the shooting until it was stopped about two miles away in the 3700 block of North Second Street.

Vanore said that no weapon was found in the vehicle after the stop but added that a fourth man who arrived with the three others fired at the crowd of people and then fled on foot.

Police said the Monday night shooting was apparent retaliation for a murder Sunday night in the same neighborhood. In that shooting, Andrew Coach, 20, of the 300 block of Raymond Street, died about an hour after being found in the 4500 block of North Fourth Street, shot in the abdomen.