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The skirmish started with an exchange of words and a man swinging at an officer in the lobby of a men’s homeless shelter in Manhattan.

Soon, the man was being subdued by several uniformed officers working for the city’s Department of Homeless Services, according to security video of the incident.

And that’s when things got out of control, federal prosecutors said on Thursday.

While officers held the man down, Cordell Fitts, who was working as a supervising sergeant with the city’s Department of Homeless Services, kicked and stomped the man’s head more than 10 times, prosecutors said.

Sergeant Fitts punched him two more times in the head after officers attempted to place the homeless man in handcuffs, prosecutors said. Sergeant Fitts, 34, was charged with deprivation of the victim’s civil rights and filing a false report about the incident.

He was released on bond after a court appearance on Thursday. His attorney, Julia L. Gatto, declined to comment.

Video of the beating, which federal prosecutors made public on Thursday, raised some of the same questions — how marginalized and poor people are treated in city facilities — as did an incident in December when the police yanked a 1-year-old baby from the arms of his mother, Jazmine Headley, as she was being arrested at a public benefits office in Brooklyn. Cellphone footage of that incident went viral on social media.

The assault at the 30th Street shelter, identified by prosecutors as the Bellevue men’s shelter, occurred on March 6, 2017, prosecutors said. They did not say why it took two years to charge Sergeant Fitts.

According to a criminal complaint unsealed on Thursday, the victim, who prosecutors did not name, was in the shelter’s lobby interacting with several officers and a security guard. At one point, the victim and Sergeant Fitts exchanged words and Sergeant Fitts gestured toward an exit area of the shelter, the complaint said.

Sergeant Fitts then reached toward the victim, putting his hands on the man’s chest. The man responded by swinging at Sergeant Fitts with what appeared to be closed fists, the complaint said.

According to the complaint, a police report of the incident stated that “necessary force” was used to “safely detain” the man and that a small pocketknife fell from the man’s jacket during the altercation as he continued to resist arrest. The report also quoted the victim as saying that he was off his medication and “going through a lot.”

Although the report “purports to have been drafted” by another officer, language in it was drafted by Sergeant Fitts, who instructed another officer to sign it, prosecutors charged.

The officer who signed the report has said that he did not hear the victim make the comment about his medication and also did not see a knife fall to the ground, the complaint said.

Prosecutors said Sergeant Fitts joined the homeless services agency as a police officer in 2012 and worked there until about March 2018.

“Fitts’s alleged conduct not only betrayed his duty as an officer to protect those under his charge, but also violated the law,” Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States attorney in Manhattan, said.

Margaret Garnett, the commissioner of the city’s investigation department, which had investigated the incident with prosecutors, added that shelters “should provide a safe environment for the homeless of our city, not one where clients fear the officers employed to protect them.”

Isaac McGinn, a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services, said, “The actions described, including the cover-up, are horrifying and will never be tolerated in our city.” He said that working with the New York Police Department, “We remain squarely focused on improving shelter security while strengthening oversight.”

Prosecutors did not describe any injuries the man may have suffered or say what has happened to him in the two years since the incident. The government said only that he was previously a resident of the homeless agency’s facilities. The video shows that the man was ultimately brought to his feet and escorted out of the lobby.

Edgar Sandoval contributed reporting.

Follow Benjamin Weiser on Twitter: @BenWeiserNYT

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