Social Question

mazingerz88's avatar

Are white cops killing black handcuffed perpetrators just racists or is there something else going on?

Asked by mazingerz88 (28826points) August 25th, 2021
20 responses
“Great Question” (3points)

Here is an article from NPR

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NEW ORLEANS — Louisiana state troopers were captured on body camera video stunning, punching and dragging a Black man as he apologized for leading them on a high-speed chase — footage of the man’s last moments alive that The Associated Press obtained after authorities refused to release it for two years.

“I’m your brother! I’m scared! I’m scared!” Ronald Greene can be heard telling the white troopers as the unarmed man is jolted repeatedly with a stun gun before he even gets out of his car along a dark, rural road.

The 2019 arrest outside Monroe, Louisiana, is the subject of a federal civil rights investigation. But unlike other in-custody deaths across the nation where body camera video was released almost immediately, Greene’s case has been shrouded in secrecy and accusations of a cover-up.

Louisiana officials have rebuffed repeated calls to release footage and details about what caused the 49-year-old’s death. Troopers initially told Greene’s family he died on impact after crashing into a tree during the chase. Later, State Police released a one-page statement acknowledging only that Greene struggled with troopers and died on his way to the hospital.

Only now in the footage obtained by the AP from one trooper’s body camera can the public see for the first time some of what happened during the arrest.

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—-—.”

Greene wails “I’m sorry!” as another trooper delivers another stun gun shock to his backside and warns, “Look, you’re going to get it again if you don’t put your f—-—- hands behind your back!” Another trooper can be seen briefly dragging the man facedown after his legs had been shackled and his hands cuffed behind him.

Instead of rendering aid, the troopers leave the heavyset man unattended, facedown and moaning for more than nine minutes, as they use sanitizer wipes to wash blood off their hands and faces.

“I hope this guy ain’t got f———AIDS,” one of the troopers can be heard saying.

After a several-minute stretch in which Greene is not seen on camera, he appears again, limp, unresponsive and bleeding from his head and face. He is then loaded onto an ambulance gurney, his arm cuffed to the bedrail.

In many parts of the video, Greene is not on screen, and the trooper appears to cut the microphone off about halfway through, making it difficult to piece together exactly what was happening at all times. At least six troopers were on the scene of the arrest but not all had their body cameras on.

“They murdered him. It was set out, it was planned,” Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, said Wednesday. “He didn’t have a chance. Ronnie didn’t have a chance. He wasn’t going to live to tell about it.”

An attorney for Greene’s family, Lee Merritt, 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 said.

Louisiana State Police declined to comment on the contents of the video. In a statement, the agency said the “premature public release of investigative files and video evidence in this case is not authorized and… undermines the investigative process and compromises the fair and impartial outcome.”

State Police brass initially argued the troopers’ use of force was justified — “awful but lawful,” as ranking officials described it — and did not open an administrative investigation until 474 days after Greene’s death.

“Police departments have got to stop putting roadblocks up to information that is, in the public’s eye, questionable. They have to reveal all that they know, when they know it,” said Andrew Scott, a former Boca Raton, Florida, police chief who testifies as an expert witness in use-of-force cases. “It suggests that you’re hiding something.”

While noting Greene “was not without fault” and appeared to resist the troopers’ orders, Scott said dragging the handcuffed man facedown by his ankle shackles was “malicious, sadistic, completely unnecessary.”

“That should never have never happened,” he said. “You’ve got the guy completely compromised. He’s not hurting anybody.”

Charles Key, another use-of-force expert and former Baltimore police lieutenant, questioned the troopers’ decision to leave Greene unattended, handcuffed and prone for several minutes, calling the practice “just dead wrong.”

“You don’t leave somebody lying on the ground, particularly after you’ve had this fight,” Key said. “The training has been for a number of years that, as soon as you get someone under control, you put them on their side to facilitate their breathing… and particularly this guy, because he was very heavy.”

Gov. John Bel Edwards allowed Greene’s family to view the same body camera footage last year and pledged to release it to the public after the federal investigation runs its course.

Greene’s family has filed a federal wrongful-death lawsuit alleging troopers “brutalized” Greene, and “left him beaten, bloodied and in cardiac arrest” before covering up the cause of death. His family has released graphic photographs of Greene’s body on a gurney, showing deep bruises and cuts on his face and head.

Greene, a barber, failed to pull over for an unspecified traffic violation shortly after midnight on May 10, 2019, about 30 miles south of the Arkansas state line. That’s where the video obtained by AP begins, with Trooper Dakota DeMoss chasing Greene’s SUV on rural highways at over 115 mph.

Seconds before the chase ended, DeMoss warned on his radio: “We got to do something. He’s going to kill somebody.”

As DeMoss and Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth rush Greene’s SUV, he can be seen appearing to raise his hands and saying over and over, “OK, OK. I’m sorry.”

Hollingsworth shocks Greene with a stun gun within seconds through the driver’s side window as both troopers demand he get out of the vehicle.

Greene exits through the passenger side as the troopers wrestle him to the ground. One trooper can be heard saying “He’s grabbing me” as they try to handcuff him. “Put your hands behind your back, bitch,” one trooper says.

Hollingsworth strikes Greene multiple times and appears to lie on one of his arms before he is finally handcuffed.

At one point, Trooper Kory York yanks Greene’s leg shackles and briefly drags the man on his stomach even though he isn’t resisting.

York was suspended without pay for 50 hours for the dragging and for improperly deactivating his body camera. York told investigators the device was beeping loudly and his “mind was on other things.”

Hollingsworth, in a separate recording obtained by AP, can be heard telling a colleague at the office that “he beat the ever-living f—- out of” Greene.

“Choked him and everything else trying to get him under control,” Hollingsworth is heard saying. “He was spitting blood everywhere, and all of a sudden he just went limp.”

Hollingsworth later died in a single-vehicle highway crash that happened hours after he learned he would be fired for his role in the Greene case.

DeMoss, meanwhile, was arrested in connection with a separate police pursuit last year in which he and two other troopers allegedly used excessive force while handcuffing a motorist.

Exactly what caused Greene’s death remains unclear. Union Parish Coroner Renee Smith told AP last year his death was ruled accidental and attributed to cardiac arrest. Smith, who was not in office when that determination was made, said her office’s file on Greene attributed his death to a car crash and made no mention of a struggle with State Police.

The AP last year also obtained a medical report showing an emergency room doctor noted Greene arrived dead at the hospital, bruised and bloodied with two stun-gun prongs in his back. That led the doctor to question troopers’ initial account that Greene had “died on impact” after crashing into a tree.

“Does not add up,” the doctor wrote.

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Answers

KNOWITALL's avatar

It’s complicated and I’m not a cop and haven’t seen footage.
What I will say is that driving 115mph is a felony charge here. Resisting or fleeing is another charge.
He likely would have died at those speeds if he wrecked.
As far as the cops, I see no reason to pursue violence, beat him or murder him once the man surrendered if that was the case.
I will do more research on this one.

Did you know there is a social media campaign out now, that all white woke people who see a minority pulled over, we pull over and record it to make sure they leave alive?!
Pretty messed up situation that we can’t trust our cops or government anymore.

ragingloli's avatar

@kn
You never could trust them.
As written, the cops initially claimed their victim died on impact.
When George Floyd was murdered, their report stated he died from a “medical incident”.
They murder and brutalise people, then they lie and protect each other from consequences.
They have always been doing that, the only difference now is that with the prevalence of phones with cameras, their crimes are being recorded by 3rd parties, and their lies are exposed.

elbanditoroso's avatar

It’s racism, but a very based and pernicious level.

It isn’t just black / white.

It goes back to the early days of the US when blacks were considered subhuman – keep in mind that up until the 14th amendment to the constitution, black voters were only considered 3/5 citizens. Not full citizens. And this was by design. Only the 14th amendement (1868) gave blacks full rights.

So police in these chases are reverting back to early American practice of treating black people as sub-humans, without rights and equality guaranteed by law.

No coincidence that (a) most of these incidents happen in the southern US, and (b) white males are doing the arresting.

smudges's avatar

I agree with @elbanditoroso.

@KNOWITALL, I hadn’t heard about whites recording when they see a black person pulled over. I love it, but it scares the shit out of me and I hope I’m never put in that situation. I’d feel guilty forever if I didn’t record it and relieved if nothing bad happened, but would be scared to death that my life would possibly be in danger. That’s a very sad state of affairs.

kritiper's avatar

There is nothing else going on. That would indicate a conspiracy.

elbanditoroso's avatar

@kritiper identified the problem – it is a conspiracy. Written or unwritten, formal or informal, there is an understanding (tacit, perhaps accepted) that acting this way towards blacks is acceptable police behavior. Because if it weren’t acceptable, it wouldn’t happen as often as it does.

Thank you @kritiper for confirming what is true.

SergeantQueen's avatar

AlL cOpS aRe RaCiSt

kritiper's avatar

I do not advocate the existence of a conspiracy. I said it WOULD indicate a conspiracy, I didn’t say that it actually did.
Some police act this way, as do some regular people. This is true. But there is no overall, all-encompassing conspiracy. If it were so, it would be totally un-American.

KNOWITALL's avatar

@smudges In every video so far the white people recording are confronted by police themselves, so yes, it’s scary.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Why is it in all the videos they tell the guy to put his hands behind his back like, 20 times?

smudges's avatar

@Dutchess_III I often wonder if it’s so they have ‘proof’ on body-cam that the suspect was “resisting”. They can say just about anything they want on cam, and later say to their superiors, “See? I warned him over and over!”

smudges's avatar

@SergeantQueen No, not all. And is there a reason you type like that? I usually only see that with young teens and pre-teens.

Dutchess_III's avatar

Her typing is one of those annoying fads.

Nomore_lockout's avatar

They lied. They’re Nazis. Fire every fucking one of them. Got it? Get it? Good!

ragingloli's avatar

@Dutchess_III
It is a recently invented way of expressing sarcasm in text form, in place of, and with a higher derision content than, the ”/s” at the end of a sarcastic sentence.

smudges's avatar

Ahhh…ok @ragingloli. Well it looks silly and juvenile.

Brian1946's avatar

@Dutchess_III

“Why is it in all the videos they tell the guy to put his hands behind his back like, 20 times?”

Is this after the guy has already put his hands behind his back?

Dutchess_III's avatar

No. From the videos I have seen it shows then refusing to put their hands behind their backs

Inspired_2write's avatar

In regards to why they refuse to put their hands behind their back culd possibly be to incite an attack by the ploice then have that shown in court, an dposibly get out of the crime?

It seems that is the reason some are doing this..knowing that police have it filmed.

One way to fight it in court and get sympathetic followers.

smudges's avatar

@Dutchess_III & @Brian1946 I’ve also seen in videos where the person can’t put their hand/s behind their back because it’s under them and the cop is on top of them so they can’t get it out, or a cop is holding their arm out in an attempt to fold it behind them. I just want to yell at them to given them an effing chance to get their arm behind them! {{sigh}} I dunno.

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