The final act of the Ronald Greene incident, now drawn out to almost five-and-a-half in the making, appears nigh and increasingly obvious that the higher up the chain of command, the less justice will be done.
Throughout the years, involving federal investigations, state investigations, media investigations, and attempted prosecutions, of five Louisiana State Police troopers and Union Parish sheriff deputies, only two will face charges and one, retired trooper Kory York, just accepted a plea deal that amounts to little more than a slap on the wrist.
The deal was opposed by Greene’s family. Black motorist Greene led law enforcement officers through a high-speed chase in May, 2019 that ended with a stop where officers corralled him, restrained him, stunned him, and struck some blows, even as he resisted but didn’t use any force against them. After the intervention of questionable physical tactics lasting nearly an hour, he was transported to a hospital but died.
Rightly so, the family has called up it a coverup from day one, when they were told Greene died in an accident and was reported to the media that way even as Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards was alerted of the incident differently. Yet over a year went by before any wide-ranging internal investigation was launched while the LSP sat on audiovisual evidence, whereupon the trooper that recording showed most culpable after being told he would be fired hours later died in a single-vehicle crash that could have been part of a suicide attempt.
Edwards and then-LSP Superintendent Kevin Reeves continued to sit on the real story behind Greene’s last hours alive until media leaks forced them to address it, and not long after the Associated Press broke the story about the coverup by obtaining and releasing the recordings that Edwards had refused to free, Reeves abruptly retired, with full pension. York also will keep his full pension and his no contest plea prevents any assumption of guilt from being used in a civil case Greene’s relatives have brought.
After that, Edwards met with Greene’s family to show these and admit the truth. It seems likely that Edwards wanted to maintain the public fiction of Greene’s death as a crash victim because in a bruising reelection campaign in 2019 he didn’t want the controversy to deter blacks from voting for him out of disgust with a pattern of misconduct by the LSP with black citizens.
Even a year later, Edwards continued to insist in public that Greene died in a wreck. Finally, the Republican-led House of Representatives launched an inquiry, but never seriously pursued the matter, making the whole episode more about political opportunism and damage control run by a House GOP leadership friendly to Edwards.
Edwards as well left office with his pension in hand without ever having to answer questions about what he knew and when and what he did afterwards in potentially suppressing knowledge and inquiries about the incident, although a federal investigation continues. Meanwhile, the only defendant that could face a serious penalty at this point is sheriff deputy Chris Harpin, due to face trial next year unless a deal works out for him.
As far as the defendants go, what has transpired perhaps is the best that can be done. Seriously undermining the case that police brutality took Greene’s life, subsequent autopsies found Greene had highamounts of cocaine and alcohol in his system that coroners wouldn’t rule out as a cause of death. No party Third District Attorney John Belton had pursued aggressively the case (perhaps as part of an effort, later defunct, to win election last year as state attorney general) and the prosecutor hired for the case, Hugo Holland, is known statewide as a hanging prosecutor who goes for the maximum sentence possible, so if this team felt it necessary to offer a plea then they truly couldn’t see a path to a conviction on stronger charges.
But Edwards remains untouched by it all, and that’s where the real travesty occurs. Lying to the family and public for so long isn’t part of the criminal code; however, he never paid the political price for that. Criminal justice may or may not have been served on those at the scene, but political justice for those associated with the case certainly never triumphed regarding the higher-ups like Edwards.
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