ANOTHER VIEW
The Louisiana State Police on Monday arrested four troopers accused of using excessive force, deactivating their body-worn cameras and making false statements about two arrests in 2019 and 2020.
The charges followed a monthslong internal investigation into use of force incidents in the northern part of the state — a probe begun amid mounting scrutiny of the agency’s Troop F, which patrols the Monroe area and the surrounding parishes.
Federal authorities separately are investigating troopers from the same troop in the 2019 case of Ronald Greene, a Black man whose death in State Police custody still has not been explained. An attorney for Greene’s family has said that body-camera footage — which the state refuses to make public — shows troopers choking and beating the man, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns and dragging him face-down across the pavement.
One of the four troopers arrested Monday, Dakota DeMoss, 28, also was involved in Greene’s arrest and the high-speed chase that prompted a federal civil rights investigation.
He and two other troopers, George Harper, 26, and Jacob Brown, 30, face state charges of simple battery and malfeasance in office in connection with a May 2020 police chase in Franklin Parish.
All three troopers used excessive force while handcuffing a motorist who exited a vehicle and “immediately laid on the ground in a compliant position,” State Police said in a news release. They also are accused of turning off their body cameras.
Brown is charged with falsifying use of force and arrest reports and failing to “indicate and provide video evidence,” according to the news release.
State Police also booked Brown on new charges in a July 2019 drug arrest that followed a traffic stop on Interstate 20 in Ouachita Parish.
Brown and another trooper, Randall Dickerson, 34, used “excessive and unjustifiable force on the handcuffed driver, deactivated body worn cameras and reported untruthful statements regarding the alleged resistance by the suspect,” State Police said in the news release.
Two Minneapolis-area car thefts over the weekend in which young children were in the vehicles ended happily, with both kids being found unharmed.
A sharp-eyed suburban Minneapolis grandmother spotted a stolen SUV that triggered an Amber Alert on Saturday afternoon, leading police to the abandoned vehicle and the crying toddler inside.
Barb Gusse, of Brooklyn Center, said she was in her yard when she noticed the idling, white SUV in the parking lot of the Cross of Glory Lutheran Church across the street.
When she went back inside, an Amber Alert buzzed on her phone saying police were looking for a missing 1-year-old boy and a white Jeep SUV that had been stolen in Minneapolis. Gusse said she grabbed her binoculars and zeroed in on the license plate. It was a match.
She alerted police and as soon as she saw a squad car pull into the parking lot, she bundled up and rushed outside.
Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder said the end result was heartwarming instead of tragic. With a daily high temperature that hovered around zero degrees on Saturday, the child could have died if the car ran out of gas, he said.
The drive to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus is gaining speed and newly recorded cases have fallen to their lowest level in three months, but authorities worry that raucous Super Bowl celebrations could fuel new outbreaks.
More than 4 million more vaccinations were reported over the weekend, a significantly faster clip than in previous days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly one in 10 Americans have now received at least one shot. But just 2.9% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated, a long way from the 70% or more that experts say must be inoculated to conquer the outbreak.
Newly confirmed infections have declined to an average of 117,000 a day, the lowest point since early November. That is a steep drop from the peak of nearly 250,000 a day in early January.
The number of Americans in the hospital with COVID-19 has also fallen sharply to about 81,000, down from more than 130,000 last month.
Health officials say the decline in hospitalizations and new cases most likely reflects an easing of the surge that was fueled by holiday gatherings, and perhaps better adherence to safety precautions.
The drop- off in new cases comes as fewer tests for the virus are being reported. But experts say the decline in cases is real. It is more pronounced than the apparent slowdown in testing, and it is accompanied by other encouraging signs.
“We are seeing a real decline because it’s been
sustained over time and it’s correlated with decreasing hospitalizations,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University. “That tells you that there does seem to be something afoot.”
The question, he said, is whether the lower numbers can be sustained as new variants of the virus take hold in the United States. President Joe Biden has announced plans to spend billions to increase rapid testing by the summer.
COVID-19 deaths in the U. S. are still running at close to all-time highs, at an average of about 3,160 per day, down about 200 since mid- January. The death toll overall has eclipsed 460,000.
Federal officials are warning states not to relax restrictions on dining out and other social activities.
“We have yet to control this pandemic,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, head of the CDC, said Monday.
The sight of fans, many without masks, celebrating the Super Bowl in the streets, in sports bars and at game-watching parties has sparked worries of new outbreaks.
“This isn’t how we should be celebrating the
Super Bowl,” the mayor of St. Petersburg, Florida, Rick Kriseman, tweeted after a maskless party was hosted by Rapper Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in a hangar at the city’s airport, not far from where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the title.
“It’s not safe or smart. It’s stupid. We’re going to take a very close look at this, and it may end up costing someone a lot more than 50 cent.”
Police in Charleston, South Carolina, issued citations to nearly 50 people for not wearing masks in public during Sunday’s game.
Richard Medina of Los Angeles attended a friend’s backyard game party on Sunday, though he knew case numbers in Southern California remain high.
“It was outdoors, and felt like it was going to be pretty chill,” said Medina, who spent most of the past year in isolation with a roommate who hates sports. He enjoyed the escape but decided to leave after awhile.
“More people started showing up later, and it felt like the more people drank, the more they started getting sloppy about masks and keeping their distance,” he said.