Video emerged shows US police beating man who had surrendered

Authorities in the US states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts have vowed to investigate an incident captured on video in which police officers beat a man who had dropped to his knees and surrendered following a high-speed chase.

New Hampshire Governor Maggie Hassan expects the incident to be investigated by state officials, her office said on Wednesday.

“The governor is aware of the situation and we’ve reached out to the New Hampshire Departments of Safety and Justice,” Hassan’s office said in a statement. “All New Hampshire public safety officials are held to the highest standards.”

Massachusetts State Police also said that a committee would review the pursuit and apprehension of the suspect.

Aerial footage taken from a media helicopter overhead shows officers drawing their weapons on a truck they had just stopped.

A man got out of the truck, dropped to his knees, and then his stomach, before he was punched several times by at least two officers and handcuffed, the footage showed.

About an hour before the events in the video, police in Holden, Massachusetts, had tried to stop the suspect, Richard Simone, 50, who was wanted on several warrants.

Simone refused to stop, leading police on a chase that reached 100 mph (160 km/h) and ended in Nashua, New Hampshire, according to local media reports.

The use of force by law enforcement has become the focus of national debate, particularly over high-profile killings of African-Americans by mainly white officers during the last several years.

Citizen and officer videos of arrests and killings have heightened scrutiny of police behavior. Simone, along with many of the officers in the video, appeared to be white.

Police in the United States killed over 1,150 people in 2015, with the largest police departments disproportionately killing at least 321 African Americans, according to data compiled by an activist group that runs the Mapping Police Violence project.