Washington (AFP) - The US Justice Department announced Thursday that it was opening an investigation into whether the Louisiana State Police uses excessive force and engages in racially discriminatory policing.
"Every American, regardless of race, has the right to constitutional policing," Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement.
"We find significant justification to investigate whether Louisiana State Police engages in excessive force and engages in racially discriminatory policing against Black residents and other people of color," Clarke said.
The Justice Department said the investigation of troopers in the southern US state will include a review of policies, training and supervision.
It will also look at how investigations were conducted into incidents involving the use of force by state police.
The department has received reports of repeated use of excessive force against individuals suspected of minor traffic offenses or who were already handcuffed and not resisting, Clarke said.
"Some of the reports include disturbing information about the use of racial slurs and racially derogatory terms" by state troopers, she added.
The Justice Department probe in Louisiana is the first statewide "pattern or practice" investigation of a law enforcement agency in more than two decades.
It comes three years after the death in northern Louisiana of Ronald Greene, a 49-year-old Black man who police initially said had died of crash-related injuries after a high-speed car chase.
Dash-cam and body-cam video that was later released undercut that version of events, however, and showed state troopers, all of them white, Tasing, dragging, choking and beating Greene.
Greene's family has filed a wrongful death suit, arguing that a police beating left Greene "bloodied and in cardiac arrest."
Police-involved deaths have received intense scrutiny since the May 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and there have been several federal investigations into police departments in major American cities.
