Five years, some 175 stories by LouisianaVoice , at least two beatings. one death and a slew of retirements since I first started writing about Louisiana State Police and we finally get our first – and only – indictment.
And it was a federal indictment at that – over the beating of a Black man with a metal flashlight in Ouachita Parish in May 2019, more than two years ago. The killing of George Floyd and the subsequent arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing of officer Derek Chauvin took less time than that.
District Attorney John Belton, an announced candidate for attorney general, didn’t see fit to bring an indictment in the Greene death, even though it occurred in Union Parish, which is part of his 3rd JDC, along with Lincoln Parish.
Nor did Attorney General Jeff Landry dirty his hands in either case. He is, after all, the “law and order” AG, so why would he go after a state trooper who hit a Black man in the head 18 times with a metal flashlight in a span of 24 seconds?
It appears that a tight, well-constructed “wall of silence” was erected around the Bowman and Greene beatings, a conspiracy of sorts that required the cooperation of two district attorneys, a state attorney general, Louisiana State Police administrative personnel and, to an extent, if not participation in a coverup, at least an uneasy silence from the governor’s office.
I’m currently working on another book about sheriffs and one of the things I keep coming across is the idea of the so-called “CONSTITUTIONAL SHERIFF,” who is the final authority on law enforcement in a given county or parish. That being the case, where were the sheriffs in the investigations of these incidents? They seem to have been MIA.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Walker seems to have at least taken his job seriously. He’s the one who will be prosecuting the case after today’s announcement that former State Trooper Jacob Brown had been INDICTED by a federal grand jury for using excessive force against an arrestee.
Brown was a member of the trouble Troop F, headquartered in Monroe and once commanded by Kevin Reeves who was serving as Superintendent of State Police at the time of both the Ronald Greene fatal beating and the AARON BOWMAN beating less than three weeks after Greene’s death at the hands of troopers.
Odd that Louisiana State Police didn’t get around to investigating the two beatings for more than 500 days and then only after the incidents were brought to the attention of media.
But then again, after 175 stories about problems in the agency, maybe it isn’t so odd.
Louisiana Voice 
This is an example of why journalism and journalists like Tom are the fourth estate in our country. (the first 3 have archaic origins as “estates of the realm.”
One definition of the fourth estate:
The term Fourth Estate or fourth power refers to the press and news media both in explicit capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues. Though it is not formally recognized as a part of a political system, it wields significant indirect social influence.
Unfortunately, freedom of information, an ostensibly good thing, requires one to filter and choose what to believe – not a good thing. The fifth estate has emerged as a tremendous force, particularly over the past decade.
One definition of the fifth estate:
The Fifth Estate is a socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with bloggers, journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media or “social license”.
We need ascendancy of trusted sources including this blog and public news sources like NPR and PBS – and more exposure of the propaganda currently spread with impunity by the fifth estate.
Police, doctors, lawyers and others are members of closed fraternities in which protecting their members has high priority. At least equal priority should be given to protecting the rest of us by internal policing. The extent to which this is done varies widely and investigative reporting is often the only way we find out about abuses.
Thanks for your work, Tom.
Agreed! Check out Nation article by Gregg Gonsalves, re covid…..ron thompson