WATCH: Guelph police officer brutally beats elderly man during arrest at his home

The video is graphic. An old man sits on the threshold of his home while an officer stands over him, the officers leg between the seated man's legs. The elderly man holds onto the officers knee.

The officer then begins punching him in the face and head. At this point, the first officer is accompanied by another. Together, they yell at the man to "stop resisting" before turning the man over, cursing at him, kneeling on the man's back, and restraining his arms.

Bystander Christopher Cliffe said that he has filed a complaint over the brutality of the arrest with the Office of the Independent Police Review Director. The arrest took place on Tuesday afternoon, according to the Guelph Mercury.

Cliffe said that he heard the officers say that the man was under arrest for "failing to appear in court," but that when the man asked if he could retrieve his paperwork, the officers would not let him.

Cliffe witnessed the arrest when he was out food shopping, and became aware of a "scuffle" at the home near Stevenson and Grange Streets. That's when he started filming the scene.

"It felt terrible," Cliffe said, "to stand there and not be able to do anything, and ot know that if I stepped in, I'd be arrested."

Cliffe couldn't contain his ire as he watched the arrest and filmed it, saying "Look at what the officer is doing to this man."

Cliffe said that the man "wasn't going 100 per cent easy, but he wasn't putting up much of a fight... You can see in the video he grabs the cop around the knee, but that's already after the cop hit him several times," he said. "There was absolutely no justification for the level of aggression that that officer brought to the situation."

For their part, the Guelph police said that they would be "following up accordingly," and said that "If this matter has been reported to the Office of the Independent Police Review Director, our service will respect the authority of the OIPRD to review the complaint."

The Guelph police said in a press release that this man has been charged with "resisting arrest," and that "ultimately police were able to gain control and placed him under arrest." He will appear in court in April, 2021.

The man "faces numerous charges," according to police, from this incident and from his "failure to appear," which is why police were at his home.