The highest-ranking member of the Louisiana State Police on the scene of the Ronald Greene arrest, which ended in Greene’s death, denied that he had been wearing a body camera and hid the footage from his body cam from investigators for two years, the Associated Press reports.
Emerging last last month, the footage shows troopers repeatedly tazing Greene, unarmed 49-year-old Louisiana Black man who had led police on a high-speed chase before reportedly hitting a tree. On the video, Greene is see attempting to comply with police instructions and being very penitent about his actions, repeatedly saying “I’m sorry.”
On the tape, Greene is tasered, handcuffed, shackled and dragged across the pavement face down. When police took Greene to the hospital after he stopped breathing, officers told doctors Greene had died after his car struck a tree. An observant doctor, however, noticed the taser prongs in Greene’s back and questioned by police would have to taze a dead man.
The police officers’ version has changed multiple times, from Greene having died instantly after hitting the tree, then it turned into Greene passing out after resisting arrest, then police claimed Greene actively attacked police. The released video undermines all those claims.
“The video evidence in this case does not show Greene screaming, resisting or trying to get away,” Detective Albert Paxton wrote in the new report. “The only screams revealed by the video were when Greene responded to force applied to him.”