DOJ Issues Perhaps The Last Law Enforcement Investigation Report We’ll See For The Next Four Years

This is probably it for awhile. The DOJ Civil Rights Division most likely will be sidelined for at least the next four years as Trump returns to office and his not-so-latent desires to impose a police state. Notwithstanding his supporters’ apparent willingness to assault officers who stand between them and a “stolen” election, Trump has always let his blue line, freak flag fly.

So, this report [PDF], issued by the DOJ just four days before the inauguration is something of a relic even though the ink has barely dried. Like every single investigation ever mounted by the DOJ Civil Rights division, this report is full of civil rights violations committed by people who have sworn to uphold the law and respect the Constitution.

The Louisiana State Police (LSP) has been a mess for years. The agency’s previous appearances at Techdirt make that pretty clear. In February 2023, the cop-friendly Fifth Circuit Appeals Court denied immunity to LSP troopers who decided the best way to investigate the killing of a person by local police officers (who shot Miguel Nevarez 20 times) was to get a warrant to search the dead man’s house for evidence of crimes it couldn’t possibly charge him with. A year later, another trooper was being denied immunity by the same court for shooting an unarmed, fleeing man in the back.

In the first case, the court noted the only reason for this search of Nevarez’s house was to construct a narrative that would justify his killing by Hudson police officers. In the latter case, the litigation exposed the trooper’s lies about the shooting (undercut by a nearby home security camera), as well as her long history of “failing” to activate her body camera when engaging in stops or other interactions with the public.

That’s just a couple of peas. Here’s the rest of the pod:

• In July 2018, a trooper shot and paralyzed a white teenager—who was a passenger in a car stopped for a minor traffic violation—when he tried to run away from the car.
• In March 2019, a trooper grabbed a Black man in his early 20s by his hair and repeatedly slammed his head into the hood of a car.
• In May 2019, a trooper hit a handcuffed 45-year-old Black man 18 times with a flashlight as other troopers watched, breaking his jaw, wrist, and three ribs.
• In July 2019, troopers handcuffed a Black man, slammed him against a police car, threw him to the ground, and repeatedly punched and kneed him.
• In May 2020, at least seven troopers—including one who was involved in Ronald Greene’s death—gave a 29-year-old Black man a “whoopin” that would give him “nightmares for a long time,” as the troopers later wrote in text messages. One trooper told him, “I’m going to punish you, dumb bitch.” Troopers pulled his hair, punched him, and repeatedly hit him in the head with a flashlight.

Well, maybe not the “rest” of the pod. The tip of the iceberg is more like it, even if that means irresponsibly mixing metaphors.

We found that LSP troopers across the state use excessive force. Though LSP’s use of unreasonable force was not limited to any one type of force, we found LSP’s use of Tasers particularly concerning. We also found that troopers use excessive force to immediately control encounters, often within the first few moments of encountering a person and without giving the person a warning or an opportunity to comply. They also use force on those who, because they are restrained or otherwise unable to flee, do not pose a threat or a flight risk. Additionally, LSP uses excessive force on people who run from troopers, even when that person is only suspected of a misdemeanor.

The next several pages detail the atrocities committed under the color of law by LSP troopers, including tasing people who are handcuffed, tasing someone just because “they ran” (even though they were just passing the scene of the arrest and then decided to accelerate their pace after witnessing a separate deployment of excessive force), leaving people hogtied in the back of patrol cars for up to an hour at a time, pepper spraying people initially resistant to other threats of police violence, tasing a woman suffering a mental health crisis while she was holding her young child, and so on.

The problem starts at the top, which has allowed it to pervade the rest of the LSP org chart.

LSP’s system to review use of force by troopers is ineffective because it permits supervisors to ignore and, in some cases, condone problematic behavior, including excessive force by troopers. Policy requires that troopers report all deadly and “nondeadly” force and notify their supervisors about the facts and circumstances surrounding their use of force through written use-of-force reports. LSP supervisors must review these reports to assess the troopers’ actions and adherence to policy and training. However, in almost all the incidents we reviewed where we found unreasonable force or other problematic tactics or behavior, supervisors signed off on use-of-force reports without identifying problems or indicating that they took steps to correct trooper behavior.

These are not good, responsible people capable of being trusted with the power they’ve been granted. These are sadists who are paid, praised, and promoted for being sadistic. Here’s how one police pursuit ended: with a hail of bullets fired at a car (and driver) that was already immobilized.

The driver drove the vehicle backward and forward about 5 to 10 feet in either direction and became stuck in the mud. Troopers asked for permission from the LSP sergeant on scene to shoot at the vehicle. The sergeant gave the order to “take it out,” and the sergeant, together with two LSP troopers and two local officers, fired at the vehicle from about 15 to 20 feet away. After shooting at the vehicle 15 times with his handgun, one of the LSP troopers said, “He has no tires, he ain’t going nowhere,” and then continued shooting 19 more times with a rifle.

Surprisingly, the driver only suffered some cuts from a broken window. In total, officers fired 61 bullets are car they all agreed wasn’t “going nowhere.”

It’s a shit show up and down. The LSP routinely “fails” (to use the DOJ’s word) to open investigations when complaints are filed against officers. The Internal Affairs department is compromised, filled with investigators who have little desire to investigate their fellow officers or even recommend troopers’ supervisors might want to take a closer look at citizen complaints or observed patterns of misconduct.

Where does this go from here? Presumably to the scrap heap of history. The DOJ will need to move forward with a consent decree to institute reforms. Without this backing, the LSP is free to continue being as terrible as it has been. But Trump’s last term shows he has no interest in using the DOJ to go after people he considers to be allies, no matter how horrible those people might be. If anything, Trump has gotten even worse during his four years away from the White House. He’s more petty and vindictive than he was the first time around. Chances are good this will just become an unofficial memorialization of the LSP’s awfulness. The resources expended to get to the bottom of this rotten barrel of apples will ultimately be wasted.