I’ve written a number of posts about the death of Ronald Greene, a man who died in Louisiana after a police vehicle chase in which, police claimed, Greene lost control of his car and died after it slammed into a tree.
The claim of the police never made sense to me. Hospital workers reported that they found him handcuffed and shackles with taser projectiles in Greene’s body when he supposedly died on impact. Why tase a dead man? Police then changed their story to say that Greene survived the crash, but became delusional and belligerent as he exited the vehicle and needed to be restrained. And he lost consciousness sometime after officers restrained him.
Oh, and he didn’t just crash into a tree; he was essentially pushed off the road by police cars, but photos of the crash shown to Greene’s family showed little damage to the car.
Then an odder-than-most twist: One of the Louisiana State Police officers who was on scene was told he was going to be fired for lying on reports about the Greene incident. The day before his official termination, he had a single car crash where his car ran off the road and into a tree. Police ruled it an accident.
On Thursday, some of the body came footage became public. Greene didn’t die on impact with the tree. Greene wasn’t the least bit belligerent; in fact, he was just the opposite, trying to make sense of various, sometimes conflicting instructions being shouted at him in his car. He repeatedly told the officers he was scared. While still sitting in the car, which was in a ditch, being told by one officer to get out of the car and by another to show his hands, Greene was tased multiple times, all the while calling the officers “sir” and repeating, “I’m scared. I’m sorry. I’m scared, officer.”
The video of the scene is disturbing to say the least. The 49-year-old Greene tried his hardest to let the officers know he was trying to be helpful and comply, but the bevy of officers pulled, punched and kicked him.
The video repeatedly goes out, so there is no sequential record. After a video cut, an officer straddles Greene, who is lying on his stomach with his hands cuffed behind his back, pulling up the waistband of his pants. At that point, Greene is semi-conscious, groaning but not saying words. A second officers goes down to Greene’s feet to apply shackles, and then that officer drags Greene by the shackles, while Greene is face down, arms behind him, on a gravel roadside.
The timestamps show the videos were shot over a nine minute period, from the time police approached the crashed car to the time he was being dragged away face down. During that entire time, he was alive.
But Ronald Greene arrived DOA at a hospital, with police saying he died instantly in a car crash that resulted in minor damage to his car. With taser prongs in his back. And boot marks on his body.
The video is heartbreaking, particularly knowing that it’s been hidden to protect the officers who brutalized Greene. His murder is finally coming to light, and hopefully, the officers will face justice.