Man Didn't Know He'd Been Beaten By Police Until Video Surfaced

The man who was beaten by five Birmingham police officers is serving 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to an assault charge in March. But he's not done with court.

Anthony Warren's attorney, Wendy Crew, filed a claim against the city in March, the first step before filing a lawsuit seeking damages. She said Wednesday the claim was over the "horrific" beating and an attempt to suppress the video of it.

District Attorney Brandon Falls said the tape surfaced unexpectedly as prosecutors were preparing to try Warren. He said prosecutors had a video of the chase "but the beating was not on the copy we had."

Falls said the prosecutor wanted to play the video for the jury but, for technical reasons, she needed another copy and asked for the original.

"We got the original the week before the trial ... and that's where she saw the rest of the tape," he said.

He said they contacted the defense, the Alabama Bureau of Investigation and the Birmingham police chief.

On Wednesday, police chief A.C. Roper fired the five officers involved in the beating. Roper is also reviewing the action of as many as a half-dozen supervisors who saw the video over the past year and never reported it.

Crew said police "deliberately tampered with the evidence" in their handling of the video prior to the criminal trial.

"As horrific as the beating is, the deliberate tampering of evidence is just as horrific," she said.

Crew, who did not represent Warren in the criminal case, said he fled in the van because he was confronted by a man who never identified himself as an officer, was not in uniform and drove after him in an unmarked car. She said he had not been accused of any crime when the pursuit began.

She said Warren, who was hospitalized for a few days after the chase, was "totally unconscious" when he was beaten and did not know it happened until the video surfaced.