The Derek Chauvin Trial

The racism in Louisiana is legend, it has to be stopped and I wish I knew how to do it.

That would be a start anyway. And this suggestion would still likely take decades to fully filter through

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — In perhaps the strongest evidence yet of an attempted cover-up in the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, the ranking Louisiana State Police officer at the scene falsely told internal investigators that the Black man was still a threat to flee after he was shackled, and he denied the existence of his own body camera video for nearly two years until it emerged just last month.

New state police documents obtained by The Associated Press show numerous inconsistencies between Lt. John Clary’s statements to detectives and the body camera footage he denied having. They add to growing evidence of obfuscation in Greene’s death, which the white troopers initially blamed on a car crash at the end of a high-speed chase and is now the subject of a federal civil rights investigation.

The highly secretive case has drawn national attention since last week, when the AP began publishing graphic body camera videos that showed troopers repeatedly jolting Greene with stun guns, putting him in a chokehold, punching him and dragging him by his ankle shackles. And like George Floyd’s death a year ago, it once again highlighted the importance of video as key evidence in police misconduct cases.

Murder charges filed against officers in Black man's death

— The Washington state attorney general on Thursday charged two Tacoma police officers with murder and one with manslaughter in the death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man who died after telling them he couldn’t breathe as he was being restrained.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed charges of second-degree murder against Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins, and first-degree manslaughter against Timothy Rankine.

Witnesses reported seeing Burbank and Collins attack Ellis without provocation, according to a probable cause statement filed in Pierce County Superior Court, and Rankine is accused of putting pressure on Ellis’ back as the man said he couldn’t breathe.

Ellis, 33, was killed on March 3, 2020, just weeks before George Floyd’s death under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer triggered a nationwide reckoning on race and policing. The Pierce County medical examiner called his death a homicide and attributed it to lack of oxygen from being restrained.

The death made Ellis’ name synonymous with pleas for justice at protests in the Pacific Northwest. His final words — “I can’t breathe, sir!” — were captured by a home security camera.

“Ellis was not fighting back,” the probable cause statement said. “All three civilian witnesses at the intersection ... state that they never saw Ellis strike at the officers.”

Five Tacoma officers have been on paid home leave pending the charging decision, and Ferguson said the investigation is continuing.

A Pierce County sheriff’s deputy who helped restrain Ellis, Sgt. Gary Sanders, was also a focus of the probe.

The encounter began after officers reported seeing Ellis trying to get into occupied cars at a red light. They cast Ellis as the aggressor, saying he charged as an officer exited a police car.

But two witnesses who recorded parts of the fatal interaction came forward with identical stories, saying police attacked without provocation. An officer in the passenger side of a patrol car slammed his door into Ellis, knocking him down, and then jumped on him and started beating him, they said.

Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer, who was at the time a detective and the spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said then that none of the officers placed a knee on Ellis’ neck or head. But one of the witness videos that later surfaced depicts just that.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s Office botched the initial investigation into Ellis’ death by failing to disclose for three months that one of its deputies had responded; state law requires independent investigations. The Washington State Patrol took over, and the Attorney General’s Office conducted its review based on evidence gathered by the patrol.

llis had a history of mental illness and addiction. In September 2019, he was found naked after trying to rob a fast food restaurant. A sheriff’s deputy subdued him with a Taser after he refused to remain down on the ground and charged toward law enforcement.

But his landlords at the sober housing where he was staying told The Seattle Times he had been doing well in recent months after embracing mental health care for his schizophrenia.

Ellis’ death, Pierce County’s botched investigation into it, and the national outcry for racial justice helped inspire Gov. Jay Inslee to convene a task force to suggest ways to guarantee independent reviews of police use of deadly force.

Last week, Inslee signed one of the nation’s most ambitious packages of police accountability legislation, including outright bans on police use of chokeholds, neck restraints and no-knock warrants. The legislation also makes it easier to decertify police for bad acts — and creates an independent office to review deadly force cases.

I think Edgar was just commenting that unless you’d been in exactly the same situation you wouldn’t know how to react.

It is of course, possible that with explanation that it would have become understandable.

Even in less stressful situations, we don't always behave as others think we should.