The chaotic confrontation, between the police officers and two men, has prompted a departmental review about whether excessive force was used, police officials said.
The beating, the police said, came after one of the men had accosted a transit officer who was responding to complaints about a group of men smoking in a nearby subway stairwell.
The two men were arrested on charges of felony assault and other offenses and treated at a hospital, police officials said. Two of the officers were injured.
According to police officials, several commuters had complained about the men — Sidney Williams, 37, and Aaron Grissom, 36 — smoking in an entrance to the A, C and 1 trains at 169th Street on Broadway. When the officers told the men to move from the area, one of them threw a punch at an officer that was not captured in the video, officials said.
The man who shot the video, Michael Gonzalez, said the two men physically accosted the officers, at which point he began filming the incident on 169th Street in Washington Heights.
Gonzalez said one of the men, a taller man with dreadlocks whom the police identified as Grissom, tried to shove or grab a shaven-headed officer.
“I don’t know what he was thinking,” Gonzalez said. “What did he think, the officer was going to back away?”
In the video, the shaven-headed officer flicks open an extendible baton and strikes Williams, the shorter of the two men, twice over the head. Another officer wearing a watch cap takes a backhanded swing at Williams, striking him in the face.
A woman off-camera can be heard saying in Spanish, “They were telling them to move away from there, and they didn’t want to. The two of them squared with the police.”
Chaos mounted as Grissom tried to intervene and chased an officer down 169th Street; the officer tackled him to the ground.
The video shows uniformed officers and men in plainclothes — also apparently officers — rushing to the scene, and the shaven-headed officer striking Grissom multiple times while he is pinned to the ground.
The officers pile on, kicking and striking him with fists and batons. One baton strike appears to catch Grissom flush in the face, dazing him.
The Police Department has not identified the officers involved.
Grissom, who lives in the Bronx, faces charges of assault, resisting arrest, menacing and other offenses, the police said. Williams, of Brooklyn, faces charges of assault, resisting arrest and aggravated harassment.
Both men were treated at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s for pain and bruising. Williams has a nose injury, police officials said.
One of the officers involved in the melee has chipped teeth and a knee injury, the police said, and another has a hand injury.
Grissom and Williams have not yet been arraigned on criminal charges, according to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.