The Denver Police Department is reopening an internal-affairs investigation into two officers implicated in the beating of a man in Lower Downtown.

Video of the incident and an earlier decision to keep the officers on the force have prompted an outcry, especially from Latino groups.

“Additional witnesses and new information has been made available to investigators,” the department announced in a news release late Thursday. “As a result, the case has been reopened.”

Department officials declined to reveal what new information was being investigated, but a person close to the investigation said witnesses had come forward who damaged the accounts of the two officers in the April 4, 2009, incident.

“We’re trying to corroborate the evidence,” said Safety Manager Ron Perea, whose original decision to keep the officers on the force had prompted calls for his resignation. “In any case, you can’t discount evidence. You have to open it up.”

The new information being probed included two people interviewed by 9News in a broadcast Wednesday night who said they saw Michael DeHerrera being beaten by an officer despite his re peatedly yelling that he was not resisting arrest.

Hasan Aoutabachai confirmed Thursday night that internal-affairs officers contacted him and his girlfriend, Vanessa Shaver. He said they were 2 feet from DeHerrera and saw an officer wrestle DeHerrera to the ground at 15th and Larimer streets.

“He did not do anything aggressive at all,” Aoutabachai said of DeHerrera. “I know that for a fact. He was standing there not moving an inch, and he just got slammed to the ground like a rag doll.”

Aoutabachai said he heard DeHerrera repeatedly yelling that he was not resisting arrest as the police officer pummeled him.

“He was just getting the (expletive) beat out of him,” Aoutabachai recalled.

“I am completely ecstatic,” DeHerrera told 9News on Thursday night. “I can’t believe that the witnesses came forward, I am so grateful that they did.”

Eric Brown, spokesman for Mayor John Hickenlooper, said in an e-mail that “the mayor completely supports police pursuing all leads and interviewing all witnesses in a case.”

Activists face safety chief

Before Thursday’s announcement, Perea stood by his decision despite being confronted by about 50 leaders in the Latino and black communities who demanded that he fire Officer Devin Sparks and Cpl. Randy Murr, or resign himself.

Perea defended allowing the officers to keep their jobs despite a surveillance video that shows DeHerrera, then 23, getting tackled to the ground and beaten, apparently for doing nothing but talking on a cellphone.

Perea refused to back down from his decision to dock Sparks and Murr three days’ pay for filing inaccurate reports about the incident.

As the meeting came to an end, Denver City Councilwoman Judy Montero demanded Perea’s resignation.

“Right now there has been a chilling effect in regard to the decision made and that video that has been played nationally,” said Montero, standing 2 feet from Perea and staring him in the eyes as he sat at a long table surrounded by other critics.

“If you don’t want to let those two officers go, then, respectfully, it is time for you to step aside,” she added.

“I’m not satisfied that we are safe, and I’m not satisfied that we are being heard, and we have worked so incredibly hard to improve relations with the police. I am going to speak to the mayor and ask him to honor what we are saying here.”

Hickenlooper’s chief of staff, Roxane White, said the mayor’s office “will not tolerate police brutality.”

“We are taking all concerns very seriously, and we share in the frustrations involved with this case,” she said in an e-mail after the meeting. “We need to take the appropriate time to fully review the situation.”

After the meeting, Perea said he would not resign and continued to stand by his decision to keep the officers on the force.

Perea has said previously that Sparks did not use excessive force when he took DeHerrera down and beat him repeatedly with a sap, a department-issued metal bar wrapped in a leather pouch. The use of saps has since been discontinued.

Perea has said that a witness said DeHerrera had pushed another officer moments earlier, though other witnesses and DeHerrera deny that occurred. Perea has produced no other officer to say he was pushed by DeHerrera or to explain why DeHerrera wouldn’t have been arrested on the spot for assault if that occurred.

In his original discipline ruling Perea found it was reasonable for Sparks to conclude that the holding of the cellphone actually was a fist poised to strike him. The video shows Sparks confronting DeHerrera rather than any aggressive action by the man on the phone. The Denver city attorney’s office found no basis for charges against DeHerrera.

“He’s such a cop”

Hickenlooper on Monday asked Perea to forward the internal-affairs investigation of the 2009 incident to the FBI for further review.

“I am a civilian,” Perea, a career law enforcement officer and former Secret Service agent, told those attending the Thursday meeting after advocates said they feared he did not understand he was supposed to protect the public, not side with the police union. “I am not part of the blue cloth.”

Those attending shook their heads in disbelief at several junctures. One woman whispered to another, “He’s such a cop.”

Others laughed and groaned when Perea told them: “I do not believe that young man’s civil rights were violated.”

Nita Gonzales, president and chief executive of Escuela Tlateloco, a private school, said the decision to not fire the officers reflected poorly on Perea’s judgment.

“If you don’t fire them, then you need to resign,” she said.

Those in attendance also demanded that Perea halt efforts for the city to join Secure Cities, a federal program that matches fingerprints of people booked into jail against a database of prints maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The system identifies those who have been detained or deported before or have had other contact with immigration officials.

Perea, in a recent interview, said city officials are preparing to use the program despite the state not having signed on to it yet. The state is still studying the program.

Councilman Paul Lopez said implementing it would harm relations between Denver police and Latino residents and prompt victims of crime to avoid seeking help from police.

“As a councilman, I will not sign that bill if it comes to my desk,” Lopez said.

When Perea defended the program and said it took race out of the equation by relying on “biometrics,” Latina activist Veronica Barela turned to him, dismay on her face.

“You’re just so rigid,” Barela said. “There is no gray with you. There are just these rigid angles. You’re Latino. What’s the matter with you?”

Earlier Thursday, in an appearance on the talk show of radio host Mike Rosen, Hickenlooper defended the Secure Cities program and said he saw it as a valid law enforcement tool.

Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com