VIDEO: Police Beat Young Man Inside Brooklyn Target

Updated at the bottom with additional information from the cameraman, the NYPD and Target.

In a video recorded by Brooklyn resident Michael Rolland on Saturday evening, five NYPD officers hold down a young man on the floor of a Target shopping center in Brooklyn and beat him with their fists.

According to Rolland, he shot the video at around 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 25, inside the Target on Flatbush Avenue near Nostrand. (Better known as the Brooklyn Junction Target.)

Rolland says on Facebook that he’s not sure what the young man did, but that the police response seemed ”totally disproportionate and put his life at risk.”

An NYPD spokesperson says that the incident is under internal review.

In Rolland’s video, officers can be seen pressing the man into the floor as they pummel his back and neck. Although parts of the video are obscured by a growing crowd of NYPD officers and concerned Target customers, the beating appears to last about 20 seconds.

“Stop hitting him!” one woman yells repeatedly in the background.

According to Rolland: “From what I can tell they were beating him on the back because he refused to let go of the Bible (or other large gilded book) he was holding onto.”

Patch has reached out to Target for more information on the incident.

UPDATE: An NYPD spokesperson says the man in the video, “who refused to identify himself,” was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, obstruction of governmental administration, trespassing and disorderly conduct.

And Target’s press office says in a statement that Target employees were the ones to call police:

“At Target, we take the safety and security of our guests, team members and property very seriously. Following concerning behavior by one of our guests, the team contacted law enforcement.”

Rolland, the Brooklyn resident who shot the above footage, is a 31-year-old graduate student at CUNY.

He says in an interview with Patch that “about five minutes or so before that happened, I was walking toward the registers, next to the women’s section, and I believe already two officers were trying to get him to leave Target. And it seemed like he didn’t want to leave.”

Minutes later, as Rolland was about to head downstairs on an escalator, he says he heard a commotion coming from the front of the store — so he ran over and started to record.

As of 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Rolland says YouTube’s analytics tool tells him his video has been viewed nearly 50,000 times.

”I think it needs attention,” he says. ”I think it should be investigated.”