A Louisiana State Police trooper has been suspended without pay for kicking and dragging a handcuffed Black man whose in-custody death remains unexplained and the subject of a federal civil rights investigation. Body camera footage shows Master Trooper Kory York dragging Ronald Greene "on his stomach by the leg shackles" following a violent arrest and high-speed pursuit, according to internal State Police records obtained by the AP. The records are the first public acknowledgement by State Police that Greene 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 the AP. State police have repeatedly refused to publicly release the footage.
The agency initially blamed Greene'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. York was suspended without pay for 50 hours following an internal investigation that also led to the termination of Chris Hollingsworth, a trooper who died in a single-car crash after learning he had been fired over his role in the case. 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." Mark Maguire, who represents Greene's family, said: "It is now undisputed that Trooper York participated in the brutal assault that took Ronald Greene’s life. This suspension is a start but it does not come close to the full transparency and accountability the family continues to seek." (The FBI stepped in last fall.)
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