EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio — A video taken by a witness on East 152nd Street in East Cleveland on Wednesday afternoon is making its rounds on social media.

The video begins with what appears to be East Cleveland officers chasing a man on a dirt bike, and after the man falls, he is seen trying to get up and onto his bike, but then you can see a police cruiser hit the bike and the man goes down.

The officer then gets out of his car and, along with two other officers, appears to punch the man multiple times for about 7 seconds.

Later Wednesday night, East Cleveland police posted the video to Facebook and released the body camera footage and defended the officers and their actions.

Click here to see it.

News 5 spoke to East Cleveland Police Chief Scott Gardner after viewers sent the video to the newsroom. He said he saw the video circulating on social media, but also combed through body camera footage, which he said paints a different scenario.

“When you’re tasked with making an arrest it doesn’t look great, but those are the techniques we’re trained in and I haven’t observed any techniques the police aren’t trained in,” did he declare. “It doesn’t appear that any type of use of force was abused in this case, initially, that I see.”

Gardner said police tried to arrest the man on multiple occasions for reckless driving and began pursuing him when he failed to comply. He said the cruiser you can see hitting the man’s bike is a police technique used to stop a subject from fleeing.

“He was on the grass. The officers felt it was best, at this time, to use this technique because obviously if it’s going to push the bike down, it’s going to push it on the grass,” he said. “It’s basically used to maneuver the bike so it’s turned off and that’s basically what happened.”

He said the witness video did not show the man trying to run away from the police after the cruiser hit him and he said that’s why the police started beating the man, another police technique .

“Your hands are balled up and you’re basically striking, but you’re doing it in strategic places. You do it to major muscle groups to try to gain control over the arms or legs of a part,” Gardner said.

In the department’s body camera footage, you can’t see the officers hitting the man and it fades to black, but Gardner said that was because the camera was covered because he was on top of the camera. man and noted that there was absolutely no editing or redaction.

He also noted that the man was uninjured and officers asked him when he was arrested if he was okay.

“Officers clearly asked him, ‘Hey are you okay? Do you need medical attention? and he indicated he hadn’t,” Gardner said.

News 5 forwarded the videos to third-party security and policing expert Tim Dimoff. He said it appears the police used proper training when arresting the man in the video.

“It’s not uncommon. In order to take control of a subject and if you notice when they finally took control they stopped. They did not continue to strike. They didn’t hit his neck or his head. And as soon as they put the handcuffs on him, they stopped,” he said.

The man faces multiple charges including flight and avoidance, reckless operation and the report says the dirt bike was reported stolen.

The entire incident, like any other use of force incident, will be investigated by Internal Affairs.