Louisiana Voice

The political fallout over the beating death of Ronald Greene at the hands of Louisiana State Police (LSP) continues with the reassignment of the state’s top law enforcement agency’s legal counsel, as reported last week by Baton Rouge TV station WBRZ’s investigative reporter Chris Nakamoto.

The removal of FAYE MORRISON from her appointive unclassified position to that of a classified civil servant follows a shakeup in Troop F in Monroe where Greene was tased, dragged and beaten in May 2019 was the latest attempt by the LSP high command at mitigating legal liability in his death. To date, three troopers have been FIRED and two resignations at the command level have taken place pursuant to Greene’s death with one of the three fired troopers DYING of an apparent suicide in the days following his termination. The problem with that termination last September was that it did not take place until last September – 16 months after Greene was killed.

Kevin Reeves, who was LSP superintendent at the time of Greene’s death, RETIRED  on Oct. 1 just as the long-delayed investigation of Greene’s death was heating up and his second in command, Chief of Staff Col. MIKE NOEL, also chose retirement rather than subject himself to expected intense questioning in his confirmation hearing as Gov. John Bel Edwards’ appointee as chairman of the Louisiana Gaming Control Board.

But Morrison’s demotion is of particular interest. Like the attempt by Bobby Jindal to make former director of the Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control MURPHY PAINTER a scapegoat years earlier, these types of events rarely occur in a vacuum. There’s always a back story.

Morrison may have given legal advice but ultimately, she took her orders from the LSP brass and those top two administrators (Reeves and Noel) are already gone, leaving only one outside of Troop F – or perhaps more appropriately, F-Troop – who may have known the details of the attempted cover-up in Greene’s death.

Rather than termination, Morrison was given something of a soft landing – if a 36.5 percent pay cut can be considered soft. An Attorney 3 classified employee from August 2010 until July 2017, when she was promoted to the unclassified appointive position of Assistant Secretary, she went from making $93,500 a year to $150,000 before getting a salary bump to $156,000 last July. With her reassignment back to Attorney 3, her pay was slashed to $99,000.

If her performance as the LSP legal counsel was so abysmal, why not fire her like the three troopers involved or force her into retirement a-la Reeves and Noel?

Without appearing too conspiratorial, it could just be that she knows too much about the machinations of the attempted spin control over Greene’s death and the beating and tasing of ANTONIO HARRIS, another African American man by some of the same F-Troopers a year after Greene’s death.

Of course, certain information would be protected under attorney-client privilege but there could well be other information outside that protective realm that Morrison is aware of that LSP would be embarrassed over or perhaps even find itself exposed to further legal liability should it be revealed.

As Lyndon Johnson once said in explaining why he wouldn’t fire FBI director J. Edgar Hoover: “It’s probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out, than outside the tent pissing in.”