*Louisiana State Police have maintained that the in-custody May 2019 death of Ronald Greene was caused from injuries he sustained in a car crash following high speed chase. But they’re story has changed following the newly revealed bodycam footage, which shows Master Trooper Kory York dragging Greene “on his stomach by the leg shackles” following a violent arrest after the high-speed pursuit, according to internal State Police records obtained by The Associated Press.
York has been suspended without pay for kicking and dragging Greene while handcuffed, as his in-custody death remains unexplained and the subject of a federal civil rights investigation.
The records are the first public acknowledgement by State Police that Greene, 49, was mistreated, and they confirm details provided last year by an attorney for Greene’s family who viewed graphic body camera footage of the May 2019 arrest and likened it the police killing of George Floyd. The video shows troopers choking and beating the man, repeatedly jolting him with stun guns and dragging him face-down across the pavement, the attorney told AP.
State Police have repeatedly refused to publicly release the body camera footage. The agency has been tight lipped about Greene’s death and initially blamed the man’s fatal injuries on a car crash outside Monroe, La.
York, who turned his own body camera off on his way to the scene, is seen on other body-cam footage yanking Greene’s shackles and repeatedly using profanity toward Greene before he died in custody.
“You’re gonna lay on your f—ing belly like I told you!” the trooper says at one point, according to the police records.
York was suspended without pay for 50 hours following an internal investigation that also led to the termination of another trooper, Chris Hollingsworth, who died in a single-car crash after learning he had been fired over his role in the incident. The AP last year published a 27-second audio clip from Hollingsworth’s body camera in which he can be heard telling a colleague, “I beat the ever-living f— out of” Greene before he “all of a sudden he just went limp.”
“It is now undisputed that Trooper York participated in the brutal assault that took Ronald Greene’s life,” said Mark Maguire, a Philadelphia civil rights attorney who represents Greene’s family. “This suspension is a start but it does not come close to the full transparency and accountability the family continues to seek.”
Below, Greene’s family and attorneys in an October interview calling for authorities to release the body camera footage.
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