“As soon as these videos were brought to my attention, I immediately instructed my Bureau of Professional Standards to conduct and conduct a thorough and fair investigation into this matter, and into all of the circumstances involved,” said Police Commissioner William Gross in a statement Friday. night.
“I have placed a sergeant involved in this incident on administrative leave and will take additional action as needed at the end of the investigation,” said Gross. “I want to encourage people to bring these matters to our attention so that we can investigate them appropriately.”
The videos were released to attorney Carl Williams by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office as part of a discovery in a case in which he works pro bono through the National Lawyers Guild, Williams told CNN in a telephone interview Saturday morning.
Williams told CNN that he had addressed about eight cases of protesters arrested during a rally that took place May 31 to June 1 in Boston.
The music video Williams sent to CNN is part of 70 hours of video released to him.
Williams said the story the police gave about that night, including the fact that protesters “went wild and looted shops in Boston,” does not give the full scope of what happened.
“Protesters, activists, organizers, people from Black Lives Matters said, ‘The police attacked us and they used weapons and they used advanced weapons and chemical weapons,’” said Williams.
A camera clip provided to CNN by Williams shows a sergeant “bragging” about his actions during the protest, including hitting people with his vehicle, Williams said.
The unidentified sergeant in the video, which lasts less than a minute, is heard laughing and explaining to another officer how he hit protesters with a vehicle.
He describes how he used an unmarked state police cruiser to hit protesters nearby.
“I’m f ** king touching people with the car,” he says.
It is not clear if the sergeant seen in the video provided to CNN is the same sergeant that placed the police commissioner on administrative leave.
“(The) criminal defense attorney in me says these are many counts of a minimal assault battery with a dangerous weapon, at the very least,” Williams said.
The Suffolk County District Attorney’s office said it is watching the videos.
“Several of the videos show disturbing scenes that deserve further investigation, and that’s what the office is doing,” Renee Algarin, a spokeswoman for the office, said in an email to CNN. DA (Rachael) Rollins takes this very seriously.
CNN has contacted the Boston Police Department and the local police union for additional comments and information.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh released a statement Friday night saying that the clips – which he describes as “hard to watch” – raise questions he expects the Internal Affairs department’s investigation to answer.
“We never want police officers to use more force than necessary, even when tensions are high,” Walsh said. “Situations like this are also exactly why we are implementing body-worn cameras for all police officers, and why we have convened a police reform task force to work towards necessary reforms and be accountable to the police,” the statement said.
There were more than a few cases of police misconduct in the videos, Williams said.
“The police revengefully used weapons to attack people. And you can see that they brag about it many, many, many times, and it’s part of their culture,” Williams said.
“People who are overseers, not people at the line level, people with gold badges and people with sergeant stripes bragging, stealing things, attacking people with weapons in vengeful ways, not serving and protecting ways. And that’s terrifying.”
CNN’s Laura Ly, Ganesh Setty and Anna Sturla contributed to this report.