A police chief in Arizona has placed four officers on leave after a disturbing surveillance video surfaced showing them surrounding and violently beating a black man to the ground.

Mesa Police Chief Ramon Batista said Wednesday that Andre Miller, a pastor in the area, contacted him about footage from an apartment complex's surveillance camera.

Miller, '"Hey, this looks very alarming, and I need you to look at it,'" Batista told Fox 10 News. "I examined it, and I immediately opened up an investigation."

Batista also released the 20-minute recording to the public as part of an internal investigation.



The footage, recorded late on the night of May 23, shows a man—later identified by his attorneys as Robert Johnson—standing against a rail in his apartment building talking on the phone. Another man can be seen sitting against a wall talking to an officer. An elevator door then opens, and several more officers emerge and approach Johnson and frisk him.



Officers did not find any weapons on Johnson, Batista noted in a statement, and asked the 33-year-old to move away from the railing, stand by the wall behind him, and then sit down.

As the video shows, Johnson complied and, still looking at his cellphone, leaned against the wall next to the elevator. Immediately, four officers swarmed around him, grabbed his body, knee him in the gut, and started to shove and punch him in the head and face, knocking him to the floor. They then dragged and handcuffed him. Later on, an officer takes his head and slams it into the elevator door.

According to Batista, Johnson did not follow officers' orders to sit down. But the police chief conceded that the use of force was unnecessary.

"I don't feel that our officers were at their best," he said. "I don't feel this situation needed to go the way that it went."

A spokesperson for the Mesa Police Department confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the four cops in the video — three officers and a sergeant — have now been placed administrative leave and that the department is investigating the incident. The chief did not learn of the footage until a week after the incident, the department said.



Johnson was arrested for disorderly conduct and hindering prosecution. His companion, Erik Reyes, was arrested for possession and concealment of drug paraphernalia.



In a more detailed statement Wednesday, Batista said that the officers were responding to a domestic disturbance "with a firearm in the apartment."

The department also made public footage from the officers' body cameras, in which Johnson can be heard cursing at the officers after they handcuff him. In one clip, officers tell Johnson to sit down; when he does not, they become violent.