Two women who said they saw the accident recounted that the car was moving when it turned directly into Mr. Robinson and hit him.

Deputy Inspector George Fitzgibbon, the commander of the 69th Precinct, which covers Canarsie, said the officers had brought the car to a stop to block Mr. Robinson’s path to the door.

“Whether he tried to hurdle it, or just slammed into the car, and fell back, that’s what he did,” Inspector Fitzgibbon said at a community meeting on Tuesday night.

One of the women who challenged that account, Zina Callahan, 38, said she watched the chase from her second-floor apartment above the walkway to the building after hearing the screech of a car and a police loudspeaker blaring: “Stop running! Stop running!”

“He made a turn to come into the walkway, and the cop sped up and he hit him,” Ms. Callahan said. “He went up a little in the air. He came down. He rolled over twice.”

Franchette Mowbray, 26, said she watched the episode from her eighth-floor apartment. “They hit him,” she said. “He flew up and he came down. They backed the car up, and they told him to get up. People were yelling out their windows screaming at the cops, ‘We saw what you did.’ ”