In one long-suppressed video, he can be seen pummeling a Black motorist with a flashlight, in another he slams a Black motorist into a police cruiser, and in yet another Brown and other troopers beat a Black man and hoist him to his feet by his dreadlocks.
Many of those cases involve the state police’s Monroe-based Troop F, which has become notorious for its treatment of Black motorists and counted Jacob Brown among its troopers. Greene’s death was among at least a dozen cases in the last decade identified by the AP in which state troopers or their bosses ignored or concealed evidence of beatings, deflected blame and impeded efforts to root out misconduct. Investigators have focused on a meeting that the elder Brown attended in which state police commanders pressured their own detectives to hold off on arresting a trooper seen on body-camera video striking Greene in the head and later boasting, “I beat the ever-living f- out of him.” John Bel Edwards on down refused for more than two years to publicly release the body camera video. When it was eventually published by the AP this spring, the footage showed white troopers swarming Greene’s car, stunning, punching and dragging him by his ankle shackles, even as he appeared to surrender, wailing, “I’m your brother! I’m scared, I’m scared!”Īaron Bowman was struck 18 times in the head with a flashlightįallout brought federal scrutiny not just to the troopers but to whether top brass obstructed justice to protect them, according to documents and people familiar with the case. State police later acknowledged Greene was involved in a “struggle” with troopers but officials from Gov. ‘WE’VE GOT TO FACE THIS HEAD ON’Ī potential reckoning in the Louisiana State Police came in the wake of Greene’s death on a rural roadside near Monroe on May 10, 2019 - a fatality troopers initially blamed on a car crash at the end of a high-speed chase. Amid a federal investigation of the 2019 beating and death of a Black motorist, some say the LSP is broken. “Nobody holds them accountable.”Īn Associated Press investigation has found a Louisiana State Police culture mired in patronage, impunity and, in some cases, racism.
Lloyd Grafton, a use-of-force expert who is consulting on the Greene family’s civil case and served on the Louisiana State Police Commission. “There’s a corruption that allows the reprobates in state police to just sort of do as they damn well please,” said W. And the son would not only become a “legacy hire” but prove his instructors prophetic by becoming one of the most violent troopers in the state, reserving most of his punches, flashlight strikes and kicks for the Black drivers he pulled over along the soybean and cotton fields near where he grew up. Jacob Brown is the son of Bob Brown, then part of the state police’s top brass who would rise to second in command despite being reprimanded years earlier for calling Black colleagues the n-word and hanging a Confederate flag in his office. One wrote that he was an arrogant, chronic rule breaker with “toxic” character traits that should disqualify him from ever joining the state’s elite law enforcement agency.įortunately for Brown, the state police was known as a place where who you knew often trumped what you did, and where most introductory chats eventually got around to a simple question: Who’s your daddy?
(AP) - Growing up in the piney backwoods of northern Louisiana, where yards were dotted with crosses and the occasional Confederate flag, Jacob Brown was raised on hunting, fishing and dreams of becoming a state trooper.īut within weeks of arriving at the Louisiana State Police training academy in Baton Rouge, instructors pegged Brown as trouble.