The Associated Press has conducted
an investigation into
the Louisiana State Troopers.
And they have found that there
have been cover ups, brutal
police beatings, and tapes that
have been kept from the public.
As the state troopers have told
the public that the tapes
don't even exist.
Now, this AP review of internal
investigative records and
newly obtained videos identified at
least a dozen cases, over the past
decade alone, in which
these Louisiana State Troopers or
their bosses either ignored or
concealed evidence of beatings.
They also deflected blame,
and impeded efforts to root out
misconduct.
The AP writes that the review that
they did, coming amid a widening
federal investigation into state
police misconduct,
found troopers have made a habit of
turning off or muting body cameras
during pursuits.
When footage is recorded,
the agency routinely
refuses to release it.
So what exactly prompted this
investigation in the first place?
The Associated Press discloses that
the state police have been
under intense scrutiny since May,
when the AP published previously
unreleased body cam footage of
Ronald Greene's May 10,
2019 arrest, at the end of
a high-speed chase near Monroe.
It showed white troopers stunning,
beating, and
dragging Greene as he pleaded for
mercy.
In fact, one clip that a supervisor
denied having for two years,
show troopers leaving the heavyset
Green prone and shackled facedown
for more than nine minutes.
Among the 49-year-old's last words,
I'm your brother, I'm scared,
I'm scared.
Now, I want to show you a portion
of that video, so
people can really understand just
how brutal this was.
I want to give you a warning
because it is, in fact, graphic.
But with that said,
let's take a look.
>> Warning,
the video is disturbing.
>> I'm scared, I'm your brother,
I'm scared.
>> Ronald Greene is pleading with
Louisiana state police officers who
wrestle him to the ground following
a pursuit in May 2019.
>> Put your hands behind your back.
>> Tase him, tase him, tase him.
>> Aah!
>> After excerpts were published by
the Associated Press,
state police released 40 minutes of
body camera videos,
which show Greene being tased and
punched from several angles.
Officers say he continued
to resist.
Greene could be heard repeatedly
saying, I'm sorry.
>> I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Officer.
>> The FBI is investigating
Greene's death and
what led up to it.
But on the tape,
Trooper Chris Hollingsworth is
heard explaining what happened.
>> I beat the ever living [BLEEP]
out of him, choked him, and
everything else to try and
get him under control.
And [BLEEP] was still fighting and
we was still wrestling with him,
trying to hold him down because he
was spitting blood everywhere.
And then all of a sudden,
he just went limp.
>> The state troopers initially
blamed his death on a car crash.
So they lied, obviously.
>> Yeah, to me, first of all,
credit to Associated Press.
Great journalism here uncovering
about a dozen cases
that were over-the-top egregious.
And in each of those cases,
the police hid the evidence for
a very long time.
So don't tell me about a few bad
apples.
This appears to be very standard
operating procedure.
You beat the hell out of detainees.
Well, I'm calling them
detainees now.
Look, they're acting like military
and that's the lingo that's now
pervasive.
So you beat the hell out of
citizens, and
then you lie about it brazenly.
In the Ronald Greene case,
we didn't even show
the worst part of the video.
After they got him handcuffed and
he's bloodied and he's been on the
ground for nine minutes, then they
start dragging him by his feet.
And then they went and
filed a report saying,
he hit a tree and died.
And the cops all along had
the tape.
We got the tape recently, but
the cops had it the whole time.
And the whole time, they're backing
other cops that they know for
a fact are liars,
because it is part of the system.
And, Nina,
there's a couple elements here.
One is, massive police reform
across the country.
And the second is, in the south,
honestly, this seems to be
almost part of the culture.
Yeah, of course the cops are
supposed to beat up black people.
And by the way,
a couple of poor white folks,
never rich white folks, but
some poor white folks.
And then we just think it's normal,
and we cover it up.
>> There's definitely a caste and
class element to this.
And when I use the word caste,
black folks.
And the whole notion of policing in
America is really,
what is the policing relationship,
using that term loosely, for
the African American community?
And what was it designed to do?
Never designed to protect and
serve because as you can see and
hear from the officer's own mouth,
they were talking about Mr. Greene
as if he was not a human being.
And that natural bodily responses
or somehow resisting arrest,
your body responds.
It is a natural response to
continue to move when pain is being
inflicted upon you.
The indifference that they had to
this man's life.
And let me tell you something,
the governor of that state,
the attorney general of that state,
all kinds of investigation
should be opened.
Those officers,
upon that investigation,
because I want to just base
it on this one video which,
to me, the video says it all,
not only should they be fired,
they should be absolutely charged.
So the Department of Justice also
needs to get involved in cases like
this.
And every single officer,
administrator that had anything
to do with the cover up,
they need to go.
This is not policing,
this is brutality that happens time
and time again.
And you know what?
Black folks and poor folks,
particularly black folks, we
always need a camera to back us up.
And even though they knew that
footage existed,
because they knew there was not
going to be any consequence, they
didn't give a damn about lying.
>> Yeah, there are some criminal
charges which I'll get to.
But first,
I want to go to retired supervisor,
who actually oversaw a particularly
violent clique of troopers.
And he told internal investigators
this year that it was his common
practice to rubber stamp officers
use of force reports without
reviewing.
Without even looking at the body
cam footage.
Captain John Peters,
the regional troop commander,
recently retired after
acknowledging he approved troopers'
use-of-force reports without
reviewing their body camera video.
Peters told investigators that
approving such documents without
watching the video was his common
practice.
Here's his quote, the ultimate
responsibility is mine.
Records show Peters
wrote in an internal email about
the approvals last year.
I failed, he said.
And regarding the criminal charges,
there are some who
are facing criminal charges for
their brutality.
One former trooper by the name of
Jacob Brown, was perhaps
the agency's most prolifically
violent officer in recent years.
Records show he tallied 23 uses of
force dating to 2015.
19 on black people.
And he faces
charges in three separate beatings.
Video and police records show he
beat Aaron Larry Bowman 18 times
with a flashlight after deputies
pulled him over for
a traffic violation in May of 2019.
State police also didn't
investigate the attack
until 536 days later.
And only did so
after a lawsuit from Bowman, who
was left with a broken jaw, ribs,
and wrist, as well as a gash to his
head that required six staples to
close.
And so to your point about the few
rotten apples, Cenk.
You see here, very clearly, that
they're covering up for each other.
Their practices in investigating
accusations of brutality just makes
it clear they're not really
investigating at all.
They give the stamp of approval to
brutal police beatings without even
looking at the body cam
footage because, why even bother?
They're going to cover up for
each other anyway.
Why bother looking at the footage?
>> Yeah, let me be clear.
I don't believe
Captain Peters at all.
He said, I never looked at any
of those tapes.
Well, if that's true,
that means you never did your job,
because your job was to look at
those tapes.
And that was the core of your job.
Well, then we should take his
pension away.
>> I agree.
>> Well, you know why
Captain Peters is lying?
because they needed someone who was
one of them, a good guy they could
trust in their gang, their mob.
And purposely,
he'd look at the tapes and
he'd bury them,
and then he'd retire and
go, it was all me.
My bad, but it doesn't
matter because I'm retired.
He should be charged, he
should have his pension taken away.
And then when you say that to cops,
there are like, my beloved pension.
Well, they're beloved heads that
you smashed open, right,
because you didn't care at all.
You thought there was going to be
no consequences.
That's what gangs do,
they cover for each other, they
cover up their criminality, etc.
Don't get me wrong,
there are a few good apples.
>> There are, yeah, there are.
But there's no consequence,
that's why they had this kind of
cavalier attitude.
And 19 of the 23, for that one
example, Ana, that you gave,
how in hell did this man get to 23?
>> How was he able to, and
19 of the 23 were black?
There it is.
Now, it wouldn't matter to me if
they were purple.
Wrong is wrong and right is right.
But you see the racialized
anti-black pattern here,
because black people don't have to
be treated with respect at all.
The level of indifference and
violence.
And guess what?
There should be felonies for any
officer on any level of government
that falsifies document, period.
>> Yeah, we need to have
accountability, for God's sake.
Is this our police or
is it not our police?
Or are they hired to be security
guards for the rich, and
we are considered the enemy,
the occupied people of America?
Because it certainly
feels that way.
And there is no question in
Louisiana, it is disproportionately
impacting African Americans
at a massive rate.
And again, there are white folks
who- >> They pay taxes by
the way too, Cenk.
I'm sorry, paying taxes to get beat
over the head like this, or killed.
>> That's exactly right.
I mean, these are public servants.
And anyone who tries to claim that
they're not supposed to be held
accountable by the very people
who pay their salaries,
they're wrong, they're wrong.
These are supposed to be people who
keep communities safe.
And we've seen over and over again,
that that is not the case.
That they target certain
communities based on socioeconomic
status and race, and just treat
them with extreme brutality, and
get away with it.
So anyway, it's infuriating.
>> They [INAUDIBLE] are acting like
the cops are above the law.
And then they yell at us,
you have to respect them.
No, number one,
you gotta earn that respect.
Number two, you gotta earn your
paycheck because you actually
work for us, and your job isn't
supposed to be to brutalize us.
It's supposed to protect us.
They've lost track of that
completely.
And you can tell from the story.
The reason we're so mad is,
this is not a one-off.
This is systemic,
they do it on purpose.
>> No arrest should lead to
somebody pleading for their life.
I mean, can we just all agree with
that point right there?
>> Everyone here agrees.
I wish there was [CROSSTALK]. >> I
bet you a lot of right wing do
not agree. Yeah, and that's why
they act the way they do.
And it's the right wing that
protects them, because they don't
mind this result. We're outraged by
this result, and they think, well,
that's kind of what we hired them
for. But we all pay their taxes,
and this is unacceptable, and
we're not going to allow it anymore
in America. We're going to stand
up for ourselves.
And if you don't like that, well,
that's a sad day for you because
we're tired of these beatings and
we're tired these deaths.
>> We are, we need a paradigm shift
about what public safety looks like
in totality. I mean,
public safety is not just policing.
It's education, it's jobs,
it's infrastructure, it's
clean air, clean food, clean water.
How about that? What is real?
Let's re-imagine public safety
in the United States of America.
This is beyond the pale.