PHILADELPHIA, May 7 (UPI) -- Philadelphia police officials urged citizens to remain calm following the release of a video showing at least a dozen officers beating three shooting suspects.

A helicopter with the local Fox news affiliate captured video Monday showing Philadelphia police removing three men from their car and beating and kicking them repeatedly. Police officials said the officers were responding to a triple shooting in the northern Philadelphia neighborhood of Hunting Park and the men were suspects.

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said his officers were agitated and stressed from the search for Eric DeShawn Floyd, a suspect in the shooting death of Sgt. Stephen Liczbinski, the Philadelphia Daily News said Wednesday.

"On the surface, it certainly does not look good in terms of the amount of force that was used," Ramsey said, adding his office launched an internal affairs investigation into the beating.

D. Scott Perrine, a lawyer representing the three shooting suspects, compared the action of the Philadelphia police to guerrilla warfare.

"(Ramsey) implores Philadelphians to take sympathy on behalf of police officers who engaged in behavior that is indicative of guerrilla-warfare tactics that we would see in Iraq before we liberated that country," he told the Daily News.