#Louisiana police release new bodycam footage

Newly-obtained bodycam video of the fatal arrest of Ronald Greene — and his long-suppressed autopsy report — revealed more troubling details of the unarmed black Louisiana driver’s 2019 death.

The shocking footage, obtained by the Associated Press on Friday, shows State Troopers ordering Greene to lie on his stomach and remain face down after the violent arrest outside Monroe, Louisiana in which he was stunned, dragged and punched.

“Don’t you turn over! Lay on your belly! Lay on your belly!” Trooper Kory York yells before briefly dragging Greene, 49, by the chain that connects his ankle shackles.

York then kneels on Greene’s back and tells him again, “You better lay on your f—— belly like I told you to! You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Greene replies.

“He’s not getting enough air,” a paramedic said at one point in the footage, but emergency workers don’t appear to be giving the dying suspect oxygen.

The autopsy report, also newly unearthed by the AP on Friday, cited Greene’s head injuries and the way he was restrained as factors in his death. It did not reveal his manner of death (such as natural, accidental or homicide).

Cops initially claimed that Greene died on impact after crashing into a tree following a police chase stemming from an unknown traffic infraction.

On Friday, after two years of refusing to explain Greene’s death and under mounting public pressure, the state police released all body camera footage related to Greene’s arrest.

But the AP had already obtained that footage, and this week published a 46-minute bodycam video showing one trooper wrestling Greene to the ground, putting him in a chokehold and punching him in the face while another can be heard calling him a “stupid motherf——.”

“I’m sorry!” Greene can be heard wailing as another trooper uses a stun gun on his backside and warns, “Look, you’re going to get it again if you don’t put your f—king hands behind your back!” 

At one point in the newly obtained batch of video, Trooper Chris Hollingsworth can be heard telling a fellow officer that “I beat the ever-living f— out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control.”

“All of a sudden he just went limp. … I thought he was dead,” he said.

Hollingsworth turned off his camera after the other officer asks “You all got that on bodycam?”

Greene’s cause of death was listed as “cocaine induced agitated delirium complicated by motor vehicle collision, physical struggle, inflicted head injury and restraint,” by pathologists that conducted the autopsy for the Union Parish Coroner’s Office.

Medical officials said Greene had ingested a “significant” amount of cocaine and had a slightly illegal blood alcohol level.

Pathologists claim police did not provide them with routine documents related to the arrest, including police reports, collision details or medical records.

It “cannot be stated with certainty” if Greene’s numerous injuries were caused by the car crash or the ensuing beatdown, Arkansas State Crime Lab pathologists Jennifer Forsyth and Frank J. Paretti said.

Lee Merritt, an attorney representing Greene’s family, said the footage “has some of the same hallmarks of the George Floyd video, the length of it, the sheer brutality of it.”

“He apologized in an attempt to surrender,” Merritt said of the May 10, 2019 incident.

The Louisiana State Police has declined to comment on the new evidence, saying to do so would undermine the investigatory process.

The US Justice Department did not immediately return a request for comment from the AP.

With Post wires