The police and Manhattan prosecutors are separately examining a high-ranking officer’s use of pepper spray on a number of female protesters at a demonstration on Saturday.

Update Second Pepper Spray Video A second video has emerged showing the use of pepper spray on protesters. Go to Second Video »

Raymond W. Kelly, commissioner of the New York Police Department, said Wednesday that its Internal Affairs Bureau would look at the decision by the officer, Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, to use pepper spray, even as Mr. Kelly criticized the protesters for “tumultuous conduct.”

At the same time, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., has opened an investigation into the episode, which was captured on video and disseminated on the Internet, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is continuing.



Inspector Bologna was identified on Wednesday in another video spraying others in the Occupy Wall Street demonstration with pepper spray. Recordings of the episodes show Inspector Bologna striding through a chaotic street scene along East 12th Street, where officers arrested some protesters and corralled others behind orange mesh netting.

Deputy Inspector Roy T. Richter, the head of the Captains Endowment Association, the union that represents the upper echelons of city officers, said Inspector Bologna, who formerly led the 1st Precinct and now works in counterterrorism, would “cooperate with whatever investigative body the police commissioner designates to perform this review.”

Inspector Richter continued: “Deputy Inspector Bologna’s actions that day were motivated by his concern for the safety of officers under his command and the safety of the public. The limited use of pepper spray effectively restored order without any escalation of force or serious injury to either demonstrator or police officer.”

While officers consider the use of pepper spray relatively low on the so-called continuum of force available to them, the videos, made by several protesters at different vantage points, have prompted a level of criticism of the police rarely seen outside of fatal police shootings of unarmed people. The independent city agency that investigates accusations of police abuse said that about 400 people had complained, many from out of state.

On Wednesday, in his first public comments on the matter, Mr. Kelly questioned whether the video offered enough context to evaluate the inspector’s actions.

Mr. Kelly said he did not know what precipitated the action, but seemed to offer a justification for it. He said the group was disorderly and “intent on blocking traffic” as it marched on University Place, returning to the financial district, where protesters have camped for more than a week.

While the department’s Patrol Guide says pepper spray should be used primarily to arrest a suspect who is resisting, or for protection, it does allow for its use in “disorder control” by officers with special training.

Asked about Inspector Bologna’s actions, Erin M. Duggan, the communication director for Mr. Vance’s office, said, “The district attorney’s office takes all allegations of police misconduct seriously.” She said the arrests made at the protest on Saturday, which the police have said numbered around 80, were “being reviewed under the standard procedure.”

In one video, Inspector Bologna walks up to a group of women standing on the sidewalk behind some orange netting, squirts pepper spray at them and walks away. In interviews, two of those women said that they had received no warning before being sprayed and that its use was unprovoked.

A law enforcement official familiar with Inspector Bologna’s account of what occurred, however, said he was not aiming at the four women who appeared in videos to have sustained the brunt of the spray. Rather, he was trying to spray some men who he believed were pushing up against officers and causing a confrontation that put officers at risk of injury, the official said.

“The intention was to place them under arrest, but they fled,” the official said.

In the second video posted on the Daily Kos political blog, showing a scene that apparently occurred just seconds later, Andrew Hinderaker, 23, a photographer, can be seen with a press card around his neck in the path of a mist of spray.

In an interview, Mr. Hinderaker said he had been on East 12th Street and saw officers drag a woman from behind a net and throw her on the ground. He stepped forward and photographed the scene, then started walking on a sidewalk toward University Place.

“I felt something wet on my hand and my face,” he said, adding that he was not sure who had sprayed him. Moments later, he said, “it started to burn.”

Afterward, Mr. Hinderaker said, he crossed paths with Inspector Bologna, who told him, “You better get out of here,” and added that he could be arrested.

Rob Harris and Colin Moynihan contributed reporting.