5 Arizona officers who brutally beat a non-combative man during an arrest have been suspended. Robert Johnson, 35, was beaten senseless by cops responding to a domestic violence call at his apartment in Mesa.
Surveillance video from the apartment building caught the May 23 incident. The footage shows Johnson pressing the elevator button in a hallway as officers surround him like sharks before brutally beating him into submission when he refused orders to sit down.
One officer punched Johnson in the face six times while another cop pulled his legs out from under him. Johnson hit his head as he slid down the wall.
The suspended cops are Jhonte Jones, Rudy Monarrez, Ernesto Calderon, Robert Gambee and William Abbiatti.
The sixth officer, who watched the beating, was not suspended.
Johnson, 35, fought back tears as he spoke out during a press conference at his church on Thursday. He said the police left him “stressed and hurt.”
The video from the building’s surveillance was leaked to the police chief by a pastor.
“I didn’t know anything about this, and the way I learned about this is because a member of the community sent me the video and said, ‘Hey, this looks very alarming, and I need you to look at it,'” said Chief Ramon Batista. “I examined it, and I immediately opened up an investigation.”
Batista said he would review police procedures and acknowledged the need for a culture change within his police force.
“There’s going to be a special directive that says that we will not strike somebody in the face or in the head unless they are showing us active aggression,” he said.
WARNING: This raw video contains graphic violence that may be disturbing to some viewers.
