When police delivered the news to Ronald Greene’s mother that her son was dead they told her he had died in a car crash after hitting a tree.
Now, more than two years after this fateful day, it has now emerged that Greene died after a struggle with police during which he was kicked, dragged and tased by police, according to CNN citing an investigative report.
Body camera footage has also emerged of what happened after the crash on May 10, 2019, involving Greene and Louisiana State Police.
According to AP News the 46-minute clip shows one trooper wrestling Greene to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face while another can be heard calling him a “stupid motherf——.”
Moments before, an officer approached Greene’s car, his weapon drawn, he shouts: “Let me see your f**king hands m*therf**ker.”
According to Andrew Scott, an expert witness on use-of-force cases and former Boca Raton, Florida, police chief, even though Greene had just led officers on a lengthy high-speed chase when he stopped his inclination was to cooperate with police and do what they asked.
The disturbing footage shows officers ordering Greene to put his hands behind his back while tasering him. Greene is heard telling officers he’s scared and that he’s sorry. He can then be heard moaning on the ground.
Scott said after tasering Greene and handcuffing him, he was then left on his stomach, where his breathing would have been hindered by his own body weight.
“Officers are trained throughout the United States that once there is a struggle of this nature and an individual is handcuffed you need to push him off onto his side or get him into a sitting position so you can allow that person’s breathing to be unimpeded by his own bodyweight,” he said.
“And that didn’t happen for at least, based on my calculations, 9 minutes,” he said. “When he tried to get over onto his side another trooper pushed him down using his foot…I didn’t understand, there was absolutely no reason for that.”
While Greene is left alone on the ground the officers use sanitizer wipes to wash blood off their hands and faces.
“I hope this guy ain’t got f—— AIDS,” one of the officers can be heard saying.
The video then shows Greene being dragged by his ankles, which have been shackled, by one of the officers.
Scott described this action as “malicious, sadistic, completely unnecessary and the officer who did it is going to have to be held accountable.”
The release of the footage comes as the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division investigates the death along with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana and the FBI.
Police first told Greene’s family he died after his car crashed into a tree during the chase. Later, state police said that Greene struggled with troopers and died on his way to the hospital, as per AP News.
“They murdered him. It was set out, it was planned,” Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, told AP News. “He didn’t have a chance. Ronnie didn’t have a chance. He wasn’t going to live to tell about it.”
Lee Merritt, attorney for the family, said the footage “has some of the same hallmarks of the George Floyd video, the length of it, the sheer brutality of it.”
“He apologized in an attempt to surrender,” Merritt added.
Greene, a barber, had failed to pull over for an unspecified traffic violation shortly after midnight which led to police chasing his vehicle at speeds of over 115 mph.
A coroner ruled Greene’s death as accidental and attributed it to a cardiac arrest.
Louisiana State Police has declined to comment on the contents of the video saying “the public release of video evidence in this case… undermines the investigative process.”
Just the sections of this video that have been released is shocking enough but we can’t see all of it. These officers brutalized this man at a point when he was no threat to anybody.
I hope this family gets the justice they deserve, please share.
