DEPT OF JUSTICE PROBE — The U.S. Justice Department is opening a sweeping civil rights investigation into the Louisiana State Police amid mounting evidence that the agency has looked the other way in the face of beatings of mostly Black men, including the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene. At a press conference yesterday, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said the DOJ’s investigation will focus on two areas.
“First, whether the Louisiana State Police a pattern or practice of using excessive force, and second, whether the Louisiana State Police engages in racially discriminatory policing practices against black people and other people of color,” Clarke said.
The announcement of the probe comes more than three years after white troopers were captured on long-withheld body-camera video beating, stunning and dragging Greene on a rural roadside near Monroe, Louisiana. No one has yet been charged in the case. Assistant Attorney General Clarke says the probe is aimed at driving reforms the Justice Department could force through a federal consent decree.
