A New York City police officer who appears to punch a black youth during an arrest that was captured on video and widely circulated on the Internet has been suspended from duty, the department said on Friday.

The posting of the footage follows weeks of protests across the country over recent cases of police violence toward unarmed black men, including one in which a New York City man died after an officer placed him in a banned chokehold.

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In the eight-minute video posted on YouTube on Wednesday, a plainclothes white officer can be seen rushing up to several uniformed officers struggling to handcuff a black youth and apparently striking him at least twice. Police said the suspect is 16 years old.

Several bystanders, including the person filming the altercation, yell at the officer to stop. The footage then shows a second person, who onlookers tell police is a 12-year-old boy, being handcuffed.

As the boys are led away to patrol vehicles, one can be heard asking the officers: “What did we do? Can I hear what we did?”

The boys were being arrested on suspicion of assaulting someone and using a cane in the attack, police said.

Police did not say when the arrests occurred but the person who posted the video footage said they happened on Wednesday.

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Police said that a review by the Internal Affairs Bureau into the allegations was ongoing.

(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Additional reporting by Curtis Skinner; Editing by Richard Chang)

Watch video of the incident below: