New video in fatal arrest
NEW ORLEANS — Beaten and shackled by Louisiana state troopers, Black motorist Ronald Greene desperately tried to roll over in what may have been a struggle to breathe, but he was ordered to stay on his belly, according to body-camera video newly obtained by the Associated Press.
The long-secret autopsy report, also newly secured, cited Greene’s head injuries and the way he was restrained as factors in his May 2019 death. It also noted that he had high levels of cocaine and alcohol in his system, as well as a broken breastbone and a torn aorta.
“I beat the ever-living ... out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control,” Trooper Chris Hollingsworth can be heard telling a fellow officer in the newly obtained batch of video. “All of a sudden he just went limp . ... I thought he was dead.”
“You all got that on body cam?” the other officer asks over the phone, at which point Hollingsworth switches off his camera.
The video and autopsy report add to the growing wealth of details about Greene’s death, which has long been surrounded by allegations of a cover-up and is now the subject of a federal civil rights investigation.
Louisiana State Police initially blamed his death on a car crash and made no mention of use of force by officers.
On Friday, after two years of refusing to explain Greene’s death and under mounting public pressure, the state police released all body-camera video related to Greene’s arrest, despite the ongoing investigations. Gov. John Bel Edwards, in
an about-face, said he “strongly supported” the release, calling the video “disturbing and difficult to watch.”
But the AP had already obtained those materials and last week published previously unreleased bodycamera video that showed troopers converging on Greene’s car outside Monroe, La., after a high-speed chase. They are seen repeatedly jolting the 49-year-old unarmed man with stun guns, putting him in a chokehold, punching him in the head and dragging him by his ankle shackles.
Use-of-force experts say the most dangerous and troubling parts of the arrest came after the struggle, when officers left the heavyset Greene facedown on the ground with his hands and feet restrained for more than nine minutes.
At one point in a 30-minute video, Greene can be seen struggling to prop himself up on his side.
“Don’t you turn over! Lay on your belly! Lay on your belly!” Trooper Kory York yells before briefly dragging Greene by the chain that connects his ankle shackles.
York then kneels on Greene’s back and tells him again, “You better lay on your ... belly like I told you to! You understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Greene replies. “The trooper’s wrong, and what he did is excessive,” said Charles Key, a use-of-force expert and former Baltimore police lieutenant. “It’s a mistake because he can’t breathe. You see Greene drawing his legs up, and that may be because he can’t freaking breathe.”
Police are highly discouraged from leaving handcuffed
suspects in a prone position, particularly when they aren’t resisting, because it can hinder their breathing — a point made repeatedly at the trial this spring of the former Minneapolis officer convicted of murder in the death of George Floyd.
Col. Lamar Davis, the state police superintendent who was not in charge at the time of Greene’s death, wouldn’t comment on the conduct of the troopers involved or whether he believed they should be charged. But he said he’d spoken with Greene’s family and offered his condolences: “I can feel their pain and feel it in my heart.”
“The officers who are subject to these investigations are afforded due process,” Davis said. “You have my commitment that we will follow the facts and hold our personnel accountable.”
While the autopsy listed Greene’s cause of death as “cocaine induced agitated delirium complicated by motor vehicle collision, physical struggle, inflicted head injury and restraint,” it did not specify the manner of death — an unusual move that did not make it clear whether it could be deemed a homicide, an accident or undetermined.
Arkansas State Crime Lab pathologists who conducted the autopsy in May 2019 for the Union Parish Coroner’s Office found that Greene had a “significant” level of cocaine in his system and a blood-alcohol content just above the level that amounts to drunk driving in Louisiana.