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Five US officers charged in death of unarmed Black motorist

Officials initially said Ronald Greene died driving his car but body-camera footage that was eventually made public revealed white officers dragging, beating and stunning Greene whose 2019 death fuelled a national debate over police brutality.

In the footage acquired by AP, Greene could be heard pleading for mercy and wailing, "I'm your brother! I'm scared! I'm scared!"

Five Louisiana law enforcement officers have been charged with state crimes ranging from negligent homicide to malfeasance in the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene.

The charges on Thursday are the first to emerge from death that authorities initially blamed on a car crash before long-suppressed body-camera video showed white officers beating, stunning and dragging the Black motorist as he wailed, "I'm scared!"

Facing the most serious charges from a state grand jury was Master Trooper Kory York, who was seen on the body-camera footage dragging Greene by his ankle shackles and leaving the heavyset man face down in the dirt for more than nine minutes.

York was charged with negligent homicide and 10 counts of malfeasance in office.

Others, including a Union Parish sheriff’s deputy and three other troopers, were charged with malfeasance and obstruction of justice.

Greene's death further fuelled a national debate over police brutality, especially against Black men. One officer also shocked him with a stun gun.

"We're all excited for the indictments, but are they actually going to pay for it?" said Greene's mother, Mona Hardin, who for more than three years has kept the pressure on state and federal investigators and vowed not to bury the cremated remains of her "Ronnie" until she gets justice.

"As happy as we are, we want something to stick."

Union Parish District Attorney John Belton submitted arrest warrants for all five of the indicted officers.

The federal grand jury investigation, which expanded last year to examine whether state police brass obstructed justice to protect the troopers, remains open, and prosecutors have been tight-lipped about when the panel could make a decision on charges.

Greene's May 10, 2019, death was shrouded in secrecy from the beginning when authorities told grieving relatives that the 49-year-old died in a car crash at the end of a high-speed chase near Monroe — an account questioned by both his family and even an emergency room doctor who noted Greene's battered body.

Still, a coroner's report listed Greene's cause of death as a motor vehicle accident, a state police crash report omitted any mention of troopers using force, and 462 days would pass before state police began an internal probe.

All the while, the body-camera video remained so secret it was withheld from Greene's initial autopsy, and officials from Edwards on down declined repeated requests to release it, citing ongoing investigations.

Other

Master Trooper Kory York was seen on the body-camera footage dragging Greene by his ankle shackles and leaving the heavyset man face down in the dirt for more than nine minutes.

Impunity, nepotism, racism

But last year, the AP news agency obtained and published the footage, which showed troopers swarming Greene's car, stunning him repeatedly, punching him in the head, dragging him by the shackles and leaving him prone on the ground for more than nine minutes.

At times, Greene could be heard pleading for mercy and wailing, "I’m your brother! I'm scared! I'm scared!"

At one point, a trooper orders Greene to "lay on your ******* belly like I told you to!" — tactics-of-force experts criticised as dangerous and likely to have restricted his breathing. A sheriff's deputy can also be heard taunting, "Yeah, yeah, that **** hurts, doesn't it?"

Fallout brought federal scrutiny not just to the troopers but to whether top brass obstructed justice to protect them.

Investigators have focused on a meeting in which detectives say that state police commanders pressured them to hold off arresting a trooper seen on body-camera video striking Greene in the head and later boasting, "I beat the ever-living **** out of him."

That trooper, Chris Hollingsworth, was widely seen as the most culpable of the half-dozen officers involved, but he died in a high-speed, single-vehicle crash in 2020 just hours after being informed he would be fired over his role in Greene’s arrest.

The AP later found that Greene's arrest was among at least a dozen cases over the past decade in which state police troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings of mostly Black men, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct.

Dozens of current and former troopers said the beatings were countenanced by a culture of impunity, nepotism and, in some cases, racism.

SOURCE: AP