'You all did a good job': Supervisor is heard praising troopers who tasered Ronald Greene and left him facedown on the ground for 9 minutes in newly released bodycam captured moments before his death
Louisiana state troopers who tasered a black man in his car, dragged him out and tasered him again, leaving him for nine minutes face-down and handcuffed, were praised by their supervisor for doing 'a good job'.
Ronald Greene, 49, died shortly after his arrest in May 2019 near Monroe.
He had been driving erratically and shot a red light, then led troopers on a high-speed car chase.
He crashed, and the officers then violently arrested him, ending up covered in his blood in the process.
One trooper tells another, in an exchange captured on body camera footage, that he 'beat the f***' out of the handcuffed man.
Another, wiping the blood of him, says: 'I hope this guy ain't got f***ing AIDS.'
A trooper who appears to be a supervisor is seen arriving at the scene after Greene has been detained, and appears to praise the troopers, though it's not clear why or what he knew about the incident at the time.
'You all did a good job, you all called it out, did a good job,' he says.
The exchange is captured in body camera footage released by Louisiana authorities on Friday, after years of campaigning by Greene's family - who were initially told he died when his car crashed into a tree.
On Friday nine separate clips were released by state police.
Four officers - Trooper Dakota DeMoss, Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, Master Trooper Kory York, and Lieutenant John Clary - had their body camera footage released, plus clips from some of their patrol cars.
Video taken from Trooper Dakota DeMoss' body camera shows the violent of arrest of Greene. Louisiana State Police initially reported that he had died in a car crash
Three more officers are named in a wrongful death suit filed by Greene's family in May 2020 - Captain John Peters, Sergeant Floyd McElroy, and Deputy Sheriff Christopher Harpin.
Of the seven officers named in the suit, one - Chris Hollingsworth - has since died.
York was suspended without pay in February this year for 50 hours. DeMoss was recently arrested for another brutal arrest and high-speed chase, and it was unclear whether he is facing punishment.
The status of the others was unknown.
The new details, released on Friday, added to the anger at Greene's case, and fury at what looked like a cover-up.
Superintendent Col. Lamar Davis told a news conference on Friday that he wanted to offer his 'sincere condolences' to Greene's family.
'It's unfortunate that the path to get here has taken this long,' he said.
Davis took over as superintendent of the Louisiana State Police in October 2020 - 17 months after Greene's death.
Davis said the department was releasing all the video related to the case and the ongoing criminal investigation.
State police began investigating Greene's death a few hours after he died on May 10, 2019, Davis said, adding that it remains under investigation by state and federal agencies.
The autopsy lists Greene's cause of death as 'cocaine induced agitated delirium complicated by motor vehicle collision, physical struggle, inflicted head injury, and restraint,' according to the report, which CNN obtained from a source with knowledge of the investigation.
Greene can be heard in the footage moaning as he lies, handcuffed, face down on the ground.
'Don't you turn over! Lay on your belly! Lay on your belly!' York yells at Greene, before briefly dragging him by the chain that connects his ankle shackles.
York then kneels on Greene's back and tells him again: 'You better lay on your f****** belly like I told you to! You understand?'
'Yes, sir,' Greene replies.
A paramedic who arrives tells the troopers: 'He's not getting enough air.'
Emergency workers do not appear to be giving the dying suspect oxygen.
Greene's mother on Friday said she had watched the police bodycam footage showing his brutal killing last year, and has been 'reliving it every day'.
Mona Hardin said authorities had first told her that he was killed in a car crash after leading Louisiana state troopers on a high-speed chase, in an interview with CNN.
That narrative would later be contradicted in body camera footage, shown to Hardin last year, in which troopers are seen violently apprehending Greene.
Some of that footage was made public on Wednesday, and the remainder on Friday.
'Someone needs to pay. Someone needs to go to jail for this. This is murder what happened to my son Ronny,' she said
Greene died in an ambulance after suffering a cardiac during the arrest.
'We were told he died because of a car crash,' Hardin said. 'The detail that we got afterward was totally everything but.'
Greene's mother, Mona Hardin (left) made claims of a coverup in an interview on Friday, saying that she was initially told her son had died in a car crash. Attorney Lee Merritt (right) is representing the family in a wrongful death lawsuit
The footage shows Greene, a black man, screaming 'I'm your brother, I'm scared!' while being beaten, tasered and dragged by his feet by white troopers.
She says that the, 'coverup started within hours,' after family members received word of her son's death.
She said they were told her Greene's body was being taken out of state to Arkansas for an autopsy.
When Hardin requested Greene be kept in Louisiana, she said a Louisiana coroner told her it was 'out of her hands.'
'This is a case where all of the evidence directly contradicted the narrative provided by law enforcement,' said attorney Lee Merritt, who is representing Greene's family in a wrongful death suit.
'I want to be clear that there's nothing standard about how the state troopers in Louisiana handled this arrest or the reporting on it,' he later added.
According to the suit, it would be months before Hardin was given further clarification about her son's death.
Eventually, in 2020 Louisiana authorities gave Greene's family the opportunity to view the body camera footage of his arrest.
'It's horrific hearing my son,' Hardin said of the video.
'It's horrible that everyone has to see this, but at the same moment I'm so glad that it's exposed because of [the] corruption. It's such a horrific level of corruption all the way up to the top, from day one.'
At one point Trooper Kory York grabbing the leg shackles and dragging Greene on his stomach. York was suspended without pay for 50 days
On Wednesday clips of the footage were released to the public.
They begin with Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth and Trooper DeKota DeMoss rushing Greene's SUV, after the barber had led them on a 115-mile-per-hour chase, as he can be seen appearing to raise his hands and repeating, 'OK, OK. I'm sorry.'
Greene is also heard to say: 'I'm your brother! I'm scared! I'm scared!'
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 Hollingsworth appears to wrestle him to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face while another trooper can be heard calling him a 'stupid mother******r.'
Hollingsworth strikes Greene multiple times and appears to lie on one of his arms before he is finally handcuffed.
The troopers then leave the burly man unattended, facedown and moaning for more than nine minutes, as they use sanitizer wipes to wash blood off their hands and faces.
York was seen kicking Greene as he tried to shift from his stomach onto his side in an apparent attempt to breathe more easily.
At least six troopers were on the scene of the arrest but not all had their body cameras on.
Greene's family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in the his death. They appear above with attorney Lee Merritt during an Oct. 7 news conference
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.
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.
Exactly what caused Greene's death remains unclear.
Union Parish Coroner Renee Smith told the Associated Press last year his death was ruled accidental and attributed to cardiac arrest.
A federal and state investigation into his death continues, with a spokesman for Louisiana State Police refusing to comment because of the ongoing probe.
Smith, who was not in office when that determination was made, said her office's file on Greene attributed his death to the car and made no mention of a struggle with state police.
The AP last year 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.
Hardin said on Wednesday: 'They murdered him. It was set out, it was planned.
'He didn't have a chance. Ronnie didn't have a chance. He wasn't going to live to tell about it.'
Merritt said the footage 'has some of the same hallmarks of the George Floyd video, the length of it, the sheer brutality of it.'
Greene's mother Mona Hardin (above center). 'They murdered him. It was set out, it was planned,' she said Wednesday
'He apologized in an attempt to surrender,' Merritt said.
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.
'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 the footage of York dragging the handcuffed man face-down by his ankle shackles was 'malicious, sadistic, completely unnecessary.'
A coroner's report said Greene died of cardiac arrest
'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.'
Hollingsworth, in a separate recording made after the black man's death, could be heard telling a colleague at the office that 'he beat the ever-living f**k 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.
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.'
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.
In that case, bodycam footage, showed suspect Antonio Harris, 29, immediately surrendered after leaving his vehicle, yet DeMoss hit the suspect with his knee and slapped him in the face before turning off his bodycam, according to the Advocate.
A State Police spokesman declined to comment, citing the federal investigation.
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.
Members of Greene's family at the March on Washington in August. The authorities did not release body camera footage of his arrest until two years later
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