DOJ to investigate Louisiana State Police after beatings of mostly Black men

Troopers found to habitually turn off or mute body cameras during pursuits

The Department of Justice (DOJ) will investigate the Louisiana State Police following beatings of mostly Black men, officials have said.

The “pattern-or-practice” investigation comes amid an increasing amount of evidence revealing that the agency has ignored the beatings of Black men, including the fatal 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene.

The announcement comes over three years after white officers were seen on body-camera footage, that was withheld from the public, beating, stunning, and dragging Mr Greene on the side of a rural road close to Monroe, Louisiana.

No one has been charged in the death, which police first attributed to a car crash, despite investigations on the federal and state levels.

The Associated Press found that Mr Greene’s arrest was just one of at least a dozen times during the last ten years when state troopers or their superiors have ignored or suppressed evidence of beatings. State police have also been found to deflect responsibility and work to hamper efforts to discover and eliminate misconduct.

Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism, and sometimes outright racism.

Troopers have made a habit of turning off or muting body cameras during pursuits. When footage is recorded, the agency has routinely refused to release it. And a recently retired supervisor who oversaw a particularly violent group of troopers told internal investigators last year that it was his “common practice” to rubber-stamp officers’ use-of-force reports without ever reviewing body-camera video.

In this image from the body camera of Louisiana State Police Trooper Dakota DeMoss, his colleagues, Kory York, center left, and Chris Hollingsworth, center right, hold up Ronald Greene before paramedics arrived on May 10, 2019, outside of Monroe, La (AP)

Troopers would at times not include the use of force in reports, such as strikes to the head. Troopers also tried to justify their actions by saying that suspects were violent, resisting, or escaping, all of which were contradicted by video footage.

Black leaders have been pushing DOJ for months to open an investigation into potential racial profiling by the overwhelmingly white state police, similar to other probes opened over the past year in Minneapolis, Louisville, and Phoenix.

According to its own count, 67 per cent of state police uses of force in recent years have been against Black people, who make up 33 per cent of Louisiana’s population.

Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards is set to testify before a bipartisan panel of state lawmakers investigating Mr Greene’s death. Mr Edwards and his lawyers privately watched the video showing Mr Greene taking his final breaths during his fatal arrest — footage that didn’t reach prosecutors until nearly two years after Mr Greene died on 10 May 2019.

Federal prosecutors also are still investigating whether police leaders obstructed justice to protect troopers in Mr Greene’s case — and whether they sought to conceal evidence of troopers beating other Black drivers.

The Associated Press contributed to this report