Louisiana Voice

On Friday, The Atlantic moved a story into my email inbox that bore the headline, “TYRE NICHOLS AND THE END OF POLICE REFORM.”

What followed was a 960-word essay by writer David Graham about the now-defunct special Memphis police squad that called itself SCORPION (apparently members deemed it such an elite force that it deserved no less than the use of all caps in its name) which literally beat Nichols, an unarmed black man, to death.

The five officers apparently considered themselves so immune from responsibility that they carried out their brutality – in full view of SkyCop a Memphis surveillance camera – in the confidence that they would not be held accountable.

Turns out they were partially correct. Though they were fired soon enough and their SORPION union disbanded, three of the officers walked after their acquittal earlier in the week. Two others had already pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

Now, The Atlantic is one of the last great American publications and Graham certainly possesses greater street creds than most writers plying their trade these days. But calling the Memphis travesty the “end of police reform”?

I’m afraid that ship sailed long before the Nichols killing – right here in Louisiana, in fact – in places like Union Parish. And Baton Rouge. And Ouachita Parish. And Franklin Parish.

In fact, LouisianaVoice has published some 175 stories about State Police misconduct all over Louisiana – from Monroe to Houma, from Lake Charles to New Orleans and most of which went not only unpunished, but was covered up in elaborate efforts to shield miscreant officers. And those don’t even include the sheriffs featured in my book, Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, which exposed sheriffs who ran drugs and prostitution, routinely beat prisoners for entertainment, sanctioned killings, enriched themselves unethically and harassed citizens.

Those include:

The acquittal of State Trooper Jacob Brown for the 2019 beating of AARON BOWMAN, an African American that left Bowman, of Monroe with a broken jaw, broken ribs and a gash to his head. He struck Bowman 18 times with his flashlight and between 2015 and 2021, the year he resigned, he was involved in 23 use of force incidents, 19 of which targeted black people, according to the Associated Press. In 2024, he applied for more than $210,000 in legal fees he said the state owed him as the cost of his defense.

The 2020 beating of ANTONIO HARRIS, a black man, in Franklin Parish by three State Troopers, including Jacob Brown, also implicated in the beating of Bowman above, and Dakota DeMoss, one of several State Troopers involved in the beating of Ronald Greene in May of 2019.

Brown was also captured on video slamming DeShawn Washington against the hood of a police cruiser during a 2019 traffic stop. An Associated Press INVESTIGATION revealed a pattern of concealing beatings at the hands of State Police.

Bowman and Harris were lucky. They survived their beatings. Greene did not. Officers told Greene’s mother that he died as the result of an accident when his car collided with a tree but the damage to his car was only minor and a body cam video that surfaced much later (after officers initially said there was no video) showed him pleading for his life as cops piled on.

When an investigation into the lies and coverup of events surrounding Greene’s death and widespread cheating at the State Police Academy, rather than investigate the events themselves, State Police brass PORED THEIR EFFORTS into trying to determine the SOURCE OF INFORMATION LEAKS.

Trooper KORY YORK, who had faced the most serious charges of the five officers indicted in the case after video showed him dragging Greene by his ankle shackles, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor batter and received only a year’s probation, was allowed to retire and to qualify for his pension of nearly $83,000 per year. Two other troopers involved in the Greene beating death, Dakota DeMoss and John Peters, had their charges of obstruction of justice dismissed. Despite the beating and tasing death of Greene, those were the only charges against DeMoss and Peters.

As if the attempts at covering up their misdeeds were not enough, the Special Legislative Committee to Inquire into the Circumstances and Investigation of the Death of Ronald Greene held one or two perfunctory hearings and then QUIETLY FADED AWAY, more or less confirming the contention by LouisianaVoice that it never really intended to delve too deeply into the issue in the first place.

And then there’s the so-called “BRAVE CAVE” warehouse operated by Baton Rouge Police Department’s “Street Crimes Unit.” Eerily reminiscent of the Memphis PD’s SCORPION outfit, local cops would take suspects to the warehouse where as many as 1,000 suspects were strip searched and even beaten. Like SCORPION, BRPD’s Street Crimes Unit has been disbanded.

All of which brings us full circle back to that headline in The Atlantic. The “End of Police Reform,” it seems, occurred well before the acquittals of those three Memphis cops. And the argument could be made that that ending took place right here in Louisiana.