Four Louisiana officers charged in ‘Brave Cave’ abuse investigation
Authorities in Louisiana’s capital have charged four of the city’s police officers amid an investigation triggered by lawsuits alleging the abuse and sexual humiliation of people detained and taken to an unmarked torture warehouse dubbed the “Brave Cave”.
The second-in-command of the Baton Rouge police department, deputy chief Troy Lawrence Sr, was among those charged and placed on leave, officials confirmed at a news conference on Friday.
At the center of the case is a man who recently came forward and reported that officers beat him at the local precinct station to which the Brave Cave was attached – before supervisors then took steps to illegally destroy body-worn camera footage of the beating.
Sgt Douglas Chustz as well as officers Jesse Barcelona and Todd Thomas were also charged.
According to the police chief, Murphy Paul, the case dates back to September 2020, when officers with the anti-street crime Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination – or Brave – unit arrested a man while investigating a complaint. Officers brought the man to a bathroom at their precinct station, tried to make him disrobe to be searched and then shocked him with stun guns, Paul recounted on Friday.
A package which officers suspected contained synthetic marijuana fell from the detained man’s “anal area” after he was struck, Paul alleged.
Officers later realized that the use of the stun guns had prompted their body-worn cameras to begin recording footage.
That footage – initially viewed on a cellphone application – showed violations of the department policy prohibiting excessive use of force, Paul said. A supervisor then ordered an officer “to get rid of the body cameras” so the footage could not be downloaded from them, the chief added.
Baton Rouge police investigators uncovered that sequence of events after an investigation spurred by a lawsuit in late August from another man that described how he was arrested by Brave unit officers, brought to their
Brave Cave warehouse and beaten so badly he fractured a rib. That arrest reportedly happened in January.
Police leaders disbanded the antistreet crime unit and permanently closed the Brave Cave. But another lawsuit more recently alleged that a grandmother was detained and abused at the facility in June after officers spotted her valid prescription medication during a traffic stop.
Faced with a loud public uproar, the
Baton Rouge police department invited federal authorities to assist them as they pursued administrative and criminal investigations into members of the Brave unit.
Lawrence Sr, Thomas and Barcelona surrendered on Thursday and bonded out of jail a short while later, the local news outlet WAFB reported. Chustz had made plans to turn himself over later.
Attempts to contact an attorney who reportedly represented at least two of the officers who surrendered on Thursday were not immediately successful.
The arrest came after Lawrence Sr’s son, Troy Lawrence Jr, resigned from the Baton Rouge police department after receiving several on-duty complaints throughout the years. He also faces a battery charge in yet another case which saw him accused of using a stun gun to shock a man in the back of a patrol cruiser in August.
Paul had previously announced his intention to leave his position in November and made clear on Friday he had no intention of heeding calls to step down sooner, saying his city and police department had “more wins than losses”.
Baton Rouge’s mayor, Sharon Weston Broome, said she intended to respect Paul’s timeline but called on the