The Associated Press has just released disturbing police body-cam footage of Ronald Greene, and it’s a violent and troubling sight. In what has become a common, but no less shocking occurrence, a grieving family is left with more questions than answers as a result of excessive force by police.
May 10, 2019, outside Monroe, Louisiana, a 49-year-old black male barber by the name of Ronald Greene fails to pull over for an as-yet unspecified traffic stop. Instead, he drives fast, real fast, at speeds up to 115 miles per hour, in an attempt to evade police. There’s a high-speed chase. When he does pull over, Ronald Greene is brutally beaten, punched, tased, and dragged while he is cuffed. He is left lying face down. And then he dies in the custody of police before ever receiving medical treatment.
The Louisiana State Police Department originally told Greene’s family that he died when his car crashed into a tree during the high-speed chase. Then, according to the coroner’s office, he suffered a cardiac arrest. However, the two-minute video released by the Associated Press tells a much more distressing story.
The video, as part of a longer 46-minute video of body-cam footage, has been kept from the public for just over two years. The video shows Greene being tased, not once, but three times, and called a stupid motherfucker. He is shown bleeding profusely. In one scene he is being held up, unresponsive.
As he is pulled over Greene says he’s sorry. He cries out to the Louisiana State Troopers that, “I’m your brother.” And that, “I’m scared.” When he is eventually handcuffed, he’s left face down for nine minutes. When he tries to roll on his side, a white officer puts his foot on him, and nudges him back face down into the dirt.
At one point, an officer can be seen sanitizing his bloody hands, saying he hopes Ronald Greene doesn’t have AIDS. In one of the scenes, Greene can be seen being dragged by ankle shackles.
He was pronounced dead at the hospital. An alert physician who was told by police that Greene died as a result of a car accident concluded that that didn’t make sense, as police left Greene with prongs from the taser in his skin.
In a statement given by the ACLU of Louisiana on May 19th, 2021, Executive Director Alanah Odom: “Nearly two years after Ronald Greene’s death, we now know what Louisiana State Police were trying to hide: Ronald Greene was tortured to death by officers who denied him life-saving aide for more than nine minutes. What we are witnessing on this video is a brutal killing – a killing that was committed by cops but also condoned by our laws, perpetuated by white supremacy, and encouraged by a culture of impunity and violence.”
Odom adds that, “Louisiana State Police, despite having a long history of excessive force and civil rights violations, are often charged with investigating allegations of excessive force and misconduct by local police departments.”
We now know what Louisiana State Police have been trying to hide: Ronald Greene was tortured to death by officers who denied him life-saving aid for more than nine minutes. A system that produces such extreme levels of violence cannot be reformed – it must be dismantled. https://t.co/ZwlEY7dx1V
— ACLU of Louisiana (@ACLUofLouisiana) May 19, 2021
The video itself is evidence as part of a federal civil rights investigation.
