Video and eyewitness accounts reveal what happened when Ronald Greene and other Black people died during police encounters
Two years later, body camera video has publicly emerged to show some of his horrific last moments.
The footage obtained by the Associated Press shows officers after the crash kicking and tasing Greene — details that the family says were not revealed to them at the time they were told of his death.
Now, the family is calling for accountability for all involved. The incident involved “a cover-up on many levels,” his sister Alana Wilson told CNN.
The release of the video clips comes as the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is investigating the death, along with the US Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Louisiana and the FBI.
Greene is one of several Black people who died during police encounters in which the initial official accounts were undermined by the release of cellphone video or body camera footage or by witness accounts of the incident.
Here are some of the recent cases that gained attention when police reports were shown to be incomplete or misleading.
George Floyd
The release also noted that no weapons were used by anyone involved.
The report made no mention of Floyd being held down with a knee on his neck for more than 9 minutes.
It wasn’t until cell phone video captured by bystanders was posted that the world heard Floyd crying out that he couldn’t breathe as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned him down.
The footage went viral, sparking a summer of national protests over policing and racial bias.
Several other bystanders also captured video of the encounter, including another high school student, an off-duty firefighter and an employee at the Speedway across the street.
Chauvin could face up to 40 years in prison for second-degree murder, up to 25 years for third-degree murder and up to 10 years for manslaughter. Chauvin has no prior criminal record, so Minnesota’s sentencing guidelines recommend about 12 and a half years in prison for each murder charge and about four years for the manslaughter charge.
Breonna Taylor
Taylor was struck by bullets six times after her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired one shot at officers serving a warrant. Walker later said he believed the officers to be intruders.
A preliminary Louisville Metro Police Department internal report prepared on the raid that led to Taylor’s death suggested that officers violated department rules by opening fire, even after an officer was hit.
The officers, the investigator wrote, “took a total of thirty-two shots, when the provided circumstances made it unsafe to take a single shot. This is how the wrong person was shot and killed.”
No officers involved in the raid were charged directly in Taylor’s death.
Two other detectives connected to the incident, Myles Cosgrove and Joshua Jaynes, were fired in January.
Walter Scott
According to a police report, Slager engaged in a foot pursuit and used his stun gun before shooting Scott.
Slager fired eight shots, five of which struck Scott. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Slager claimed he shot Scott because he feared for his life after Scott grabbed his Taser.
But cellphone video taken by a bystander captured Slager chasing Scott. Prosecutors say not only did that video show Slager firing at Scott’s back from 17 feet away, but that it showed him dropping his Taser by Scott’s body.
In court two years later, Slager admitted to using excessive force, acknowledged that he didn’t shoot Scott in self-defense and said his use of force was unreasonable. He pleaded guilty to depriving Scott of his civil rights under the color of law.
Laquan McDonald
Police initially said McDonald, a Black teenager, approached officers while armed with a knife and refused verbal commands to drop it, prompting Jason Van Dyke to open fire six seconds after getting out of his squad car. He shot McDonald 16 times in October 2014.
CNN’s Eric Levenson, Aaron Cooper, Jamiel Lynch, Jason Hanna, Ray Sanchez, Omar Jimenez and Scott Glover contributed to this report.
