Last week, the Associated Press obtained police body camera footage of the arrest of Ronald Greene, a Black man who died in police custody in Louisiana after a car chase in 2019. The footage has revealed shocking brutality toward Greene, undermining the police’s account of what happened during the arrest — it indicates, experts say, a police cover-up of serious misconduct.

The incident, and the conflict between the official report and the video footage, also raises questions about the power and limitations of body cameras — a focal point of some criminal justice reform efforts — when it comes to ensuring that law enforcement is held accountable for misconduct.

Greene, a 49-year-old barber, died in police custody outside Monroe, Louisiana, in May 2019, following a police chase that began after Greene did not pull over for an unspecified traffic violation.

According to the AP, police initially told Greene’s family that he died on impact after crashing into a tree. Later, according to the same AP report, the state police “acknowledg[ed] only that Greene struggled with troopers and died on his way to the hospital.”

But the newly released footage, which lasts more than 46 minutes, reveals a prolonged struggle during which police repeatedly tased, punched, and choked Greene as they put him in handcuffs. The videos also show that he became unresponsive after a physical struggle which use-of-force experts say violates protocols for safely handling someone in handcuffs.

Greene died in police custody before arriving at a hospital, but the precise cause and timing of his death are unclear. Based on Greene’s condition upon arriving at the hospital, an emergency room doctor who saw Greene was skeptical of the troopers’ initial account that he had died during a car crash; an independent autopsy later commissioned by Greene’s family found severe injuries to his skull.

In May 2020, Greene’s family sued the police for wrongful death, and federal authorities opened a civil rights investigation into Greene’s death last fall. But Louisiana State Police declined to release the footage publicly for two years, saying that releasing it would undermine the investigative process into the incident.

However, after the AP released the body camera footage it obtained last week, the state police released what it said was all the related video, just days later. 

With the release of the graphic footage, public scrutiny of the incident has reignited, and experts have weighed in on what appears to be misconduct at several levels of law enforcement.

Alec Karakatsanis, executive director of the Washington-based nonprofit Civil Rights Corps, told Vox that the effort to obstruct the reality of Greene’s treatment by police likely included “at least low-level police officers, high-level police officials, state politicians, government lawyers, and state and federal prosecutors.”

Karakatsanis also likened the incident to the high-profile allegations of a cover-up in the death of Laquan McDonald, who was shot to death by Chicago police in 2014. In that case, too, the official police report differed markedly from later footage, but while the officer who shot McDonald was convicted in his murder, fellow officers who were charged with covering up evidence were not convicted.

The release of the footage in the Greene case has brought national public attention to another incident of police brutality in which official accounts differ from other evidence of the events. Coupled with increased public support for broad police reforms and a presidential administration sympathetic to the cause, it’s possible that more substantial steps may be taken to hold law enforcement accountable in this case.

At the same time, however, the manner in which the Greene footage was released — only after journalists forced the issue into the national spotlight, a full two years after the incident was obscured by false and inaccurate statements by the police — serves as a reminder that body cameras are far from a silver bullet as an accountability tool.

Greene’s death is shrouded in mystery, but it’s clear he was brutalized

The now-public footage, from body and dashboard cameras, doesn’t provide a clear picture of everything that happened to Greene the night that he died. Nor does a newly released autopsy report, also obtained by the AP and released Friday, which stated that Greene’s head injuries and the manner in which he was detained contributed to his death; the report also found cocaine and alcohol in his system.

The report does not give a manner of death, which the AP’s Jim Mustian described as “a highly unusual move that did not make it clear whether Greene’s death could be deemed a homicide, an accident or undetermined.”

What is clear is that, at multiple junctures, Louisiana State Police did not accurately describe what happened — and they did deploy excessive force in handling Greene.

After police tried to pull Greene over for a traffic violation, he drove away from them at high speeds. Troopers told Greene’s family he died when he hit a tree, but the footage shows Greene conscious, speaking, and moving after his car stopped; it is unclear based on reports and footage exactly how his car came to a stop. The New York Times reports that, according to Greene’s family’s lawyer, an accident reconstruction expert concluded that the marks on the car — mostly on the rear driver’s side — were inconsistent with a fatal collision. 

Footage shows that troopers opened Greene’s car door and immediately tased him.

As at least two troopers try to pull Greene out of the car, Greene can be heard saying, “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I’m scared. Officer, I’m scared, I’m your brother, I’m scared.”

The troopers struggle to arrest Greene, and, as they do so, they repeatedly tase and punch him in the face and in the back, and appear to place him in a chokehold, the footage shows. Greene can be heard apologizing and crying out in distress throughout the situation.

At one point after Greene is handcuffed with his hands behind his back, he is dragged by his ankles and left in a prone position for more than nine minutes. “I hope this guy ain’t got fucking AIDS,” one of the troopers can be heard saying as he cleans blood off of himself.

Footage may reveal misconduct and even a cover-up, experts say

Use-of-force experts say that being handcuffed in the prone position makes it difficult for someone to breathe, and police officers are told to prevent someone from staying in the position too long for that reason.

“There’s nothing in any manual anywhere in the United States that allows for dragging an individual face down by their ankles,” Charles Ramsey, the former commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, said on CNN last week after observing the footage. “Clearly this is a case of excessive force, between the tasing, kicking, beating. Having him in a prone position for that length of time … that is still a position that’s very difficult to breathe. Part of your training tells you, as soon as you get him cuffed, roll him over or sit him up, in order for them to be able to breathe.”

One trooper can be heard discussing the arrest in a telephone exchange inside his patrol vehicle.

“And I beat the ever-living fuck out of him, choked him and everything else trying to get him under control, and we finally got him in handcuffs when a third man got there, and the son of a bitch was still fighting, and we was still wrestling with him trying to hold him down because he was spitting blood everywhere — and then all of a sudden he just went limp,” the trooper said.

Not all of the troopers at the scene had their cameras on during the arrest, and Greene is not always visible in the available camera footage. The microphones are also not always on throughout the videos. And at one point, an officer deliberately turned his camera off. As a result, there are significant gaps in the details surrounding Greene’s death.

The video footage eventually shows Greene covered in blood and appearing unresponsive as he’s loaded into an ambulance. It’s not clear when Greene died, but it happened before arriving at the hospital.

As the AP reports, the troopers provided what appears to be some combination of incomplete and false information to medical professionals who handled Greene after the arrest:

Union Parish Coroner Renee Smith told AP last year his death was ruled accidental and attributed to cardiac arrest. Smith, who was not in office when that determination was made, said her office’s file on Greene attributed his death to a car crash and made no mention of a struggle with State Police.

The AP last year also obtained a medical report showing an emergency room doctor noted Greene arrived dead at the hospital, bruised and bloodied with two stun-gun prongs in his back. That led the doctor to question troopers’ initial account that Greene had “died on impact” after crashing into a tree. “Does not add up,” the doctor wrote.

Later, the police released a single-page crash report that said, “Greene was taken into custody after resisting arrest and a struggle with Troopers.” It did not mention any use of force by troopers.

Ramsey, the former police commissioner, said on CNN, “If the reports are accurate … it’s a cover-up, the statements being made are not consistent with what the video is showing.”

Troopers have so far faced few repercussions for their actions toward Greene

There were at least six troopers at the scene of the arrest, and there are seven defendants in the Greene family’s wrongful death lawsuit. But Louisiana State Police have been reluctant to make critical details public, and the repercussions so far for those involved have been limited.

According to Louisiana State Police, the trooper who dragged Greene by his ankles, Kory York, was given a 50-hour suspension and returned to active duty, pending the outcome of state and federal investigations.

The officer who can be heard describing how he had beaten and choked Greene, Chris Hollingsworth, was notified last September that he was going to be fired as a result of an internal investigation into his handling of Greene’s arrest. Hollingsworth died in a car crash hours afterward.

And a third trooper, Dakota DeMoss, was arrested in February in an unrelated case on charges of using excessive force. According to the New York Times, DeMoss remains on leave pending the outcome of disciplinary proceedings but has been “notified of the agency’s intention to terminate him.”

The federal investigation of the incident and the Greene family lawsuit continues. And local protests throughout last year — which took place against the backdrop of Black Lives Matter protests following the high-profile police murder of George Floyd — attempted to maintain attention on what local activists and Greene’s family alleged was a cover-up of police brutality. Now, with the widespread release of video footage, national scrutiny has been sparked.

Body cameras can capture abuse, but they don’t ensure anything will be done about it

The handling of Greene’s death is a reminder that, as some progressive criminal justice reformers have pointed out, the mere existence of body cameras is no guarantor of justice for people who have been wronged by the police.

Body cameras for police officers have received bipartisan support at the state and federal level and are often seen as a commonsense reform measure to enhance accountability for law enforcement.

But the reality is that the documentation provided by body camera footage alone doesn’t necessarily improve behavior. As P.R. Lockhart wrote for Vox in 2019, “the research suggests that body cameras are only as successful as the departments they are implemented in.”

According to a study published in Criminology & Public Policy that year, in one of the largest reviews of academic research on body cameras to date, scholars at George Mason University found that, in many police departments, cameras have not had a consistent or significant effect on officer behavior or citizen opinion of the police.

And the existence of footage of police brutality or killings doesn’t alter the reality that law enforcement is structurally designed to protect police officers from prosecution for misconduct. For example, police killing investigations often move exceptionally slowly, which criminal justice reformers say gives officers more time to conspire and fabricate a story as they prepare to be asked about alleged misconduct. And the frequent absence of civilian investigators makes investigations likely to be stonewalled by the “blue wall of silence” that encourages officers to avoid incriminating colleagues. 

Even when alleged misconduct is examined in courts, video footage is often incomplete and ambiguous enough to create doubt in juries. Moreover, the legal standard for use of force is so permissive that even compelling evidence won’t necessarily result in police convictions.

As President Joe Biden approaches proposing criminal justice reform legislation, advocates for more sweeping changes to policing are likely to emphasize the need to move beyond quick fixes like body cameras and look into dismantling institutional arrangements such as qualified immunity that are intended to shield police officers from being punished for the misconduct those cameras reveal.

A $1.9 billion emergency funding bill to boost security at the US Capitol in the wake of the January 6 insurrection barely passed the House on Thursday. The measure, which would also provide additional personal security for lawmakers facing an intensifying wave of threats and harassment in Washington and their home districts, received no Republican support, and exposed fissures within the Democratic Party over the issue of increasing funding for any police force.

The bill ultimately passed on Thursday, following last-minute negotiations led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with 213 votes for the bill and 212 against.

Every voting Republican voted no on the bill, claiming that it cost too much money and that there was no guarantee the funding would be properly spent enhancing security. Those votes followed recent statements from Republicans that downplayed or outright fabricated facts about the violence that transpired at the Capitol on January 6.

More strikingly, Democrats were not unified among themselves. Left-wing members of the House, including the members of the so-called Squad, broke from the party out of what could be described as a defund-the-police rationale.

Democratic Reps. Cori Bush (MO), Ilhan Omar (MN), and Ayanna Pressley (MA) voted against the legislation; Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Jamaal Bowman (NY), and Rashida Tlaib (MI), voted present, which means they officially took no position.

The defection is a sign of fissures within the party over how to think about police reform and the use of force, a policy domain that has been a source of intense national debate since the protests that swept the nation last year following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.

It also appears to be a carefully aimed warning shot by the Squad, illustrating that, when they’re unified, they have the ability to torpedo Democratic legislation. The Democratic Party relies on a narrow majority in the House to pass any one of its bills.

Bush, Omar, and Pressley released a joint statement, saying a package that “pours $1.9 billion into increased police surveillance and force without addressing the underlying threats of organized and violent white supremacy, radicalization, and disinformation that led to this attack will not prevent it from happening again.”

Bowman told reporters he voted present because “there are some things about the bill that I support, like making sure our custodial staff and our cleaners have the resources they need to respond and deal with this trauma, but there are other parts of it that I don’t support, like adding more funding to police budgets.”

While Democrats have been unified on most major legislation during the opening months of the Biden administration, that unity may not hold as more complicated and polarizing policy issues come up for debate, throwing some Democratic bills into jeopardy.

Meanwhile, Republicans’ unified opposition to a nominally pro-law enforcement bill may signal — once again — a challenge to President Joe Biden’s vision of being able to unify Congress around shared values.

January 6 and its aftermath raised serious security questions

The violence and security breaches by pro-Trump rioters seeking to shut down the certification of the 2020 election results on January 6 have raised big questions about what security should look like at the US Capitol going forward.

Capitol Police were unprepared for and slow to react to thousands of demonstrators — some of whom were armed — who stormed the Capitol, destroyed property, chanted death threats, searched the halls for lawmakers, and shut down the certification of the election results. Some 140 officers were injured and several people died. Experts say things could’ve gone far worse, had lawmakers not narrowly avoided the mob in a few close encounters.

The crisis in turn has precipitated massive scrutiny of the Capitol Police and created a morale problem in its ranks, which appears to have caused an uptick in resignations and retirements among rank-and-file officers.

In spite of this, Republican leaders in both the House and the Senate have downplayed the threat that Capitol Police faced on January 6. This has served to both exonerate supporters of former President Donald Trump for their role in the violence on that day, and also underpinned arguments for maintaining the security status quo at the Capitol.

At a hearing last week, one House Republican from Georgia said that some of the people who broke into the Capitol on January 6 were behaving as if on “a normal tourist visit” to Washington. Another likened the rioters to a “mob of misfits.” And appearing on a Fox News program on Wednesday, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson called the incursion a “peaceful protest.”

A majority of Republicans also opposed the formation of an independent commission tasked with investigating the events of the day. While 35 House Republicans broke ranks with their party on Wednesday to support the investigation, top Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, opposed such an inquiry.

This disregard for the perils that Congress members faced on January 6 comes as threats and harassment against lawmakers have been increasing. Members of Congress report that they’re increasingly being confronted in public, receiving threats to their families, and having private details of their lives posted online. Compared to last year, threats against federal lawmakers have more than doubled so far this year.

The nearly $2 billion bill passed Thursday is meant to address a wide variety of issues, including: back pay for overtime hours, hazard pay, and retention bonuses; better equipment and training; a “new quick-reaction team that would essentially create a standing force of the D.C. National Guard,” according to Politico; fortifying the Capitol complex with movable fencing, surveillance equipment, and reinforced windows and doors; and extra security for lawmakers who have been threatened and typically are not eligible for publicly funded security.

The Squad is averse to increased police funding without reform

Without any Republican support, Democrats were able to pass the spending package, but just barely. Pelosi and other top Dems had to scramble to try to assuage the Squad’s concerns about the bill, which included, according to Politico, considerations about allocating more money to a Capitol Police force in which some officers indirectly contributed to the day’s violence through lax enforcement.

“I am tired of the fact that any time where there is a failure in our system of policing, the first response is for us to give them more money, rather than investigate the failings and hold those responsible accountable,” Omar, who voted against the bill, told the Intercept. “I’ll continue to fight for structural change that actually centers people’s safety and humanity. That applies to us here in the Capitol, as well as my constituents in Minneapolis.”

The joint statement from Omar, Bush, and Pressley expressed a broader set of concerns with the bill. Here’s a key passage:

Increasing law enforcement funds does not inherently protect or safeguard the Capitol Hill or surrounding D.C. community. In fact, this bill is being passed before we have any real investigation into the events of January 6th and the failures involved because Republicans have steadfastly obstructed the creation of a January 6th commission. 

The bill also does far too little to address the unspeakable trauma of the countless officers, staff, and support workers who were on site that day – dedicating fifty times more money to the creation of a ‘quick reaction force’ than it does to counseling. We cannot support this increased funding while many of our communities continue to face police brutality while marching in the streets, and while questions about the disparate response between insurrectionists and those protesting in defense of Black lives go unanswered. 

Ultimately, Pelosi’s Democratic caucus emerged with the bill they wanted because three members of the Squad decided to vote “present” rather than oppose it.

But the entire episode showed the progressive wing of House Democrats flexing its muscle as a voting bloc, and likely foreshadows future legislative battles to come, whether on issues tied to criminal justice or other major points of policy disagreement.

Pelosi’s 11th-hour negotiations to save the bill also suggest that, with a narrow majority in the House, Democratic Party leadership cannot afford to alienate its most progressive members on any must-pass legislation — potentially offering those farther-left members more leverage on their own priorities.

And while Biden and Democratic House leadership seem to have been able to satisfy the Squad on Biden’s coronavirus relief bill and the administration’s opening gambit on a massive infrastructure bill, some rifts between the establishment and the Squad may have further-reaching consequences. For example, in light of Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, some members of the Squad introduced an unprecedented resolution to block Biden’s $735 million arms sale to Israel this week; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced a similar proposal in the Senate.

While these resolutions are unlikely to get traction, they can embolden others in the party to break from Biden — as some briefly seemed to do on the weapons sale — and serve as symbols of how the small left-wing bloc in Congress could become a thorn in the side of party leadership in the coming months and years.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is declining to order statewide lockdowns in response to her state experiencing the most severe Covid-19 outbreak in the country, opting instead to recommend that people take “personal responsibility” and “voluntarily” take a break from spaces where transmission is more likely.

The decision to refrain from mandatory restrictions is a striking development for a Democratic governor who last year garnered national attention for swiftly instituting and standing by social distancing laws even in the face of militant right-wing protests and a kidnapping attempt against her. This time around, though her state is experiencing a full-blown crisis, she’s taking a softer approach in what may be a political calculation about her reelection prospects next year.

Michigan has recently become the newest coronavirus epicenter of the US. Case rates have risen 375 percent since late February, and Michigan is home to 16 of the 20 metro areas with the nation’s highest recent number of cases. Sixteen Michigan hospitals are operating at over 90 percent capacity. Experts say that the surge is due to a combination of the enhanced contagiousness of the B.1.1.7 variant and relaxed restrictions.

But Whitmer has taken a decidedly incremental approach on reinstating distancing rules as her state is overwhelmed by new cases. At a press conference on Friday, she took a position that indicated a reluctance to reinstate full-blown lockdowns.

“We all have to step up our game for the next two weeks to bring down rising cases,” she said. “And that’s why I’m calling on high schools to voluntarily go remote for two weeks past spring break, I’m calling on youth sports to voluntarily suspend games and practices for two weeks, and I’m strongly encouraging all Michiganders to avoid dining indoors and avoid gathering with friends indoors for two weeks.”

“Policy alone won’t change the tide. We need everyone to step up and to take personal responsibility,” she said.

Whitmer emphasized that she wasn’t making restrictions mandatory, but didn’t rule out future restrictions.

Her current actions stand in contrast to her use of emergency executive orders and stay-at-home orders last spring to bring down the rate of cases in her state — a response that was popular but also elicited vociferous pushback from conservative activists and the state’s Republican-controlled legislature.

Whitmer might be worried about pushback

A growing number of public health officials and experts are calling on Whitmer to take more aggressive action, and it is possible that she will do so at some point in the future. But for now, there are a few factors that could be playing a role in her resistance to issuing mandated actions.

One is the issue of efficacy. A great deal of polling data shows that fatigue with Covid-19 restrictions is a very real phenomenon, and that even many months ago people were reporting a decline in compliance with rules. Whitmer might be concerned that with the spread of the vaccine, better weather, the relaxation of restrictions in other states, and growing optimism, it could be difficult to achieve compliance with mandatory restrictions. There could be a concern that making rules required will make people resentful while not significantly improving health outcomes.

Another factor is political calculation. She may fear backlash and disapproval at a time when people are sick of restrictions, a concern as she approaches reelection next year — in a state where Republicans control the legislature and have wasted no opportunities to paint her past Covid-19 restrictions as tyrannical.

Political observers believe Whitmer’s management of the pandemic will play a pivotal role in determining her reelection — and the reality is that perception of the virus is different now than it was a year ago.

But some public health experts say that trying to take what seems like a moderate position on social distancing during a crisis-level surge is a dangerous mistake.

“What it looks like happened is she tried to be fair and meet us in the middle,”  Debra Furr-Holden, a Michigan State University epidemiologist whom Whitmer appointed to a coronavirus task force, told the New York Times. “And what I think we’ve learned — and I hope other states will get the message — is that there really isn’t a lot of middle ground here. We just have to tighten up and hold tight.”

Stimulus checks have begun to arrive in Americans’ bank accounts — just days after President Joe Biden authorized them by signing the American Rescue Plan into law.

The speed with which eligible Americans are receiving their third and largest stimulus checks to date during the coronavirus pandemic — less than two months into Biden’s presidency — is a political victory for a president who was unable to garner bipartisan support for his bill, but was still able to swiftly pass a sweeping relief package along party lines.

As Vox’s Emily Stewart explains, most Americans will be eligible for $1,400 stimulus checks:

The full checks will go out to single people making up to $75,000 and couples making up to $150,000, and phase out at $80,000 and $160,000, based on 2019 or 2020 tax returns, depending on when people last filed their taxes. Previous checks phased out at higher income levels, meaning some people who got checks in previous rounds won’t get them this time. However, the legislation includes checks for adult dependents, such as college students and people with disabilities, for the first time.

Biden signed the bill into law on Thursday and many people began to report receiving their checks by direct deposit this weekend. A number of households reported seeing full deposits even on Friday — just a day after the law was signed.

The Internal Revenue Service said on Friday that more rounds of stimulus checks will be deposited into bank accounts over the next few weeks, and sent out in the mail in the form of checks or debit cards. The agency also said people can track the status of their checks using the ”Get My Payment” portal.

Many Americans plan to use the checks to pay for necessities

The New York Times reports that Johanna Suarez, a sophomore at Houston Community College — who was eligible for her first stimulus check because adult dependents can receive them for the first time — received a $1,400 check on Saturday, and said she plans to use to it to buy books and pay for a dental procedure.

Suarez’s plans are fairly representative, according to a Census Bureau Household Pulse study, taken from February 17 to March 1.

As part of its ongoing coronavirus survey work, the agency asked its Household Pulse survey pool what people who recently received a check spent it on — or, for those who did not receive one during the survey period, what they planned to spend their next check on.

Respondents were allowed to select more than one answer to the question, and most said the money would go to filling an essential need. The survey found about 60 percent of people planning to use at least some of their money on food, and about 45 percent planning to spend some or all the funds on housing — either rent or mortgages. Other bills were also a priority, with 45 percent saying the stimulus would help with utility payments, and about 31 percent wanting to put money toward credit cards or loans.

About 15 percent of respondents felt they might be able to save some or all of the money. Only 2.5 percent said some portion of the money would go toward recreational expenses.

There was some debate about who needed a stimulus check ahead of the passage of the American Rescue Plan, with some lawmakers worried that if too broad a slice of the American people got the checks, those with higher incomes would not spend them. This data does not resolve that debate, but it does suggest that there is a pressing need for this money among many Americans — that people are waiting for these checks in order to cover the costs of basics like food and shelter, and that they will, in fact, be spending them.

The American Rescue Plan was exceptionally popular before it passed into law — in part because of the overwhelming popularity of stimulus checks: a Vox/Data for Progress poll taken in December 2020 found that 75 percent of likely voters wanted stimulus checks to be prioritized in the drafting of the bill.

Checks were included, and in a survey taken March 5-7, Data for Progress found that nearly 70 percent of likely voters supported the bill. That group of supporters included 54 percent of Republicans. Notably, respondents cited the stimulus check provision of the bill as one of its best aspects, according to the newer survey: 78 percent of voters supported the idea of $1,400 checks.

It remains to be seen if positive perception of the law will remain constant over time, but the impression of efficiency that the quick delivery of payments produces may prove helpful to Democrats at a time when there is widespread mistrust in the federal government.