The Louisiana State Police said Mr. Greene died in 2019 from crashing his S.U.V., but video footage shows troopers shocking, choking and beating him.
The death of Ronald Greene after a police chase in Louisiana in 2019 is attracting new scrutiny after police body camera footage was published that appears to show a starkly different version of events than the one given by the Louisiana State Police. The death is under investigation by the F.B.I. and other federal agencies, and Mr. Greene’s family has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit accusing the state police of covering up the cause of his death. Here’s what we know about the case. Mr. Greene was a 49-year-old Black man who lived in Monroe, La. He was married, worked as a barber, and had recently gone into remission after battling cancer for two years, according to CNN. He was on his way to meet his wife in Florida when he died shortly after midnight on May 10, 2019. The authorities told Mr. Greene’s relatives that he died from injuries he sustained in a crash outside Monroe after he failed to stop immediately for a traffic violation, a lawyer for his family said. The Associated Press reported, citing the Union Parish coroner, that Mr. Greene’s death was ruled accidental and was attributed to cardiac arrest, and that the coroner’s file made no mention of any struggle with the police. The A.P. obtained body camera footage of the episode and published three excerpts on Wednesday. The footage shows Mr. Greene’s S.U.V. stopped on the side of the road. Troopers are seen opening his vehicle and jolting Mr. Greene with a stun gun, and Mr. Greene is heard to scream “I’m sorry” and “I’m scared.” According to The A.P., which said it had obtained 46 minutes of video footage from the encounter, one trooper wrestled Mr. Greene to the ground, put him in a chokehold and punched him in the face. Another trooper is seen briefly dragging Mr. Greene by shackles on his ankles as he lay on the ground. In the clips published by the A.P., covering more than two minutes of the encounter, Mr. Greene is seen being jolted again with a stun gun while lying handcuffed on the ground. The A.P. reported that the troopers, who were white, left Mr. Greene lying facedown and moaning for more than nine minutes, as they wiped blood from their hands and faces. “I hope this guy ain’t got AIDS,” one of the troopers is heard to say, adding an expletive.
