Police probe Germantown beating by officers caught on video

The commotion started just before midnight on a side street in Germantown.

A husband and wife in a house nearby heard yelling and ran to the window. Streetlights illuminated a struggle in the street, between two officers and a 22-year-old man who lived down the block.

The woman took out her cellphone and began to record.

The video she took April 3 was posted online Wednesday night and quickly garnered tens of thousands of views.

It shows the 22-year-old, Tyree Carroll, being punched and kicked by police officers on the 600 block of Locust Avenue.

Philadelphia police said Carroll was stopped for a narcotics violation and then fought with officers. They said he bit one officer on a thigh, a hand, and an arm, and another on a forearm, drawing blood. Both were treated for their injuries after the arrest, they said.

Carroll also was taken to a hospital. Police said that was because he intentionally slammed his head into a partition in a police car.

The department launched an Internal Affairs investigation after viewing the video Wednesday.

Berto Elmore, a lawyer for Carroll, said that the department was trying to "smear" his client and that the case indicated larger problems - police brutality against black men, and deep divides between police and the communities they are sworn to serve.

In the video, Carroll can be seen bent over in the street with two officers holding him and seemingly struggling to handcuff him. "Grandma!" he yells several times - his grandmother Nancy Carroll lives across the street from where the arrest took place.

Then he and the officers are on the ground. One of the officers backs up, then punches and kicks Carroll several times.

More officers arrive, including one who yells, "Here I come! You're getting the [expletive] Taser!" as he approaches Carroll and the other officers. With about six officers surrounding him, Carroll is kicked and punched several more times, the video shows.

Police said that there was no indication a Taser had been used, but that they would check the Tasers of the officers involved to be sure.

They said Carroll had 5.3 grams of crack cocaine at the time of his arrest.

Carroll was charged with drug, assault, and related offenses.

Nancy Carroll, 75, said Thursday night that it was difficult for her to watch the video. Sitting with Shaka Johnson, another lawyer for Tyree Carroll, in her living room, she said it was another example of "the cops beating up another black boy."

She said that she visited her grandson in prison Thursday and that his ankle was still swollen as a result of the arrest.

Johnson said he wanted Carroll released so he could receive a thorough medical examination.

Carroll was "beaten to a bloody pulp while calling out for his grandmother," Johnson said.

"Thank God for people with cellphone cameras" who are "policing the police," he said. "I'm just glad someone had the courage to do so."

Johnson said that he knows policing is dangerous, based on his experience as an officer in Atlanta, but that what he saw on the video was a "textbook definition of police brutality."

"I'm confident that we have a police chief in this town that takes these things seriously," Johnson said, referring to Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey.

The husband of the woman who recorded the video said his wife had seen police push Carroll off his bicycle and throw him to the ground. The man said he had come to the window to see officers "punching him, punching him, punching him."

"It was heartbreaking. I'd never seen anything like that in person," he said. He asked not to be identified because he feared retaliation.

The man said his wife told Carroll's family that she had recorded his arrest, then sent the footage to a neighbor. The couple had put the incident out of their minds, he said, until a blogger posted the footage online this week.

Elmore said the video "speaks for itself."

Elmore said police were "going to try to smear him. I believe this is a typical police response when they brutalize young African American males."

The department said in a statement that the arrest "would be reviewed for any departmental violations."

215-854-2961@aubreyjwhelan

Inquirer staff writer Robert Moran contributed to this article.