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Louisiana Attorney General Drops Charges Against Aaron Bowman, A Black Man Arrested After Being Struck 18 Times With

The state of Louisiana has dis­missed charges against a Black motorist who was incar­cer­at­ed for resist­ing arrest, despite being relent­less­ly beat­en with a flash­light by one of the arrest­ing state troop­ers. Officials who viewed evi­dence regard­ing the case assessed the dis­graced for­mer offi­cer, who assault­ed and arrest­ed the man, was untruth­ful in his account of the 2019 alter­ca­tion and will soon face fed­er­al civ­il and crim­i­nal law­suits con­nect­ing him to the man’s beating.
On Monday, Assistant Attorney General Darwin C. Miller announced his office would drop a bevy of charges against Monroe native Aaron Bowman, 47, relat­ed to a 2019 arrest. After tak­ing over the case in February from District Attorney Robert S. Tew’s office at the request of Bowman’s lawyers, the state’s most senior attor­neys believed the victim’s record on this mat­ter should be cleaned, accord­ing to The Advocate.

The sav­age beast act­ing under the col­or of law who bad­ly beat Mister Bowman seen in a hos­pi­tal bed after being beaten.

Upon view­ing the case, includ­ing footage from the offi­cers’ body­cams, the AG’s office said there is “insuf­fi­cient evi­dence” and “cred­i­bil­i­ty issues asso­ci­at­ed with both the arrest­ing and the assist­ing offi­cers.” Multiple sto­ries about the encounter float­ed between agen­cies about the inci­dent over the last three years.
However, an untruth­ful nar­ra­tive about his con­duct dur­ing the arrest ulti­mate­ly land­ed the vic­tim in jail on July 15, 2019, charg­ing him with improp­er lane usage, aggra­vat­ed flight from an offi­cer, resist­ing an offi­cer by force or vio­lence, and sim­ple bat­tery of a police offi­cer. Now, the man’s defense coun­sel believes jus­tice is on the horizon.
“It’s a step towards jus­tice for him. There’s obvi­ous­ly a civ­il case, which will be the ulti­mate tell of jus­tice,” Keith Whiddon, his lawyer in the crim­i­nal case, said. “But this is at least a small step towards jus­tice for him.”
According to KNOE, Bowman’s oth­er attor­ney, Donecia Banks-Miley, believes the charge should have been dropped in 2021.
“I felt that after Jacob Brown was indict­ed, this would exon­er­ate our client, Aaron Bowman. Just because the footage was already out at that time show­ing that he was beat­en,” she said. “So, I could not for the life of me, under­stand why Aaron still had these charges. Today, we’re just glad that he’s final­ly exon­er­at­ed from these charges, and we want him to feel bet­ter and let the com­mu­ni­ty know that Aaron did noth­ing wrong.”

Robert S. Tew, The District Attorney, would rather cov­er for dirty cops that uphold the law.

In May of 2019, Bowman was ham­mered 18 times with a flash­light by Jacob Brown out­side of his home after being detained by sev­er­al oth­er agen­cies for an alleged traf­fic vio­la­tion, News Star report­ed. State Police, the Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office, and oth­er law enforce­ment bod­ies said they fol­lowed Bowman to his house after offi­cers alleged­ly saw him dri­ve over the cen­ter line in the mid­dle of the road. Officers flashed the lights in their patrol car to ini­ti­ate a traf­fic stop in front of the man’s home, in his dri­ve­way. Late to arrive on the scene was Trooper Brown, who saw three offi­cers “attempt­ing to detain Bowman.” Using ver­bal com­mands, the offi­cers man­age to con­tain the sus­pect, try­ing to hand­cuff him and issue an arrest war­rant, as he lay on the ground with his hands in front of him. Court doc­u­ments claimed the offi­cer start­ed beat­ing the man with his flash­light. The tip of the weapon was cus­tomized with a “tac­ti­cal cap” designed specif­i­cal­ly to shat­ter vehi­cle glass. This adjust­ment made it a par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous weapon to use on Bowman. Bowman was hos­pi­tal­ized and need­ed stitch­es. The Attorney General’s office reviewed body­cam video from the inci­dent and con­clud­ed Bowman did not appear aggres­sive toward the offi­cer despite resist­ing arrest. It also showed Brown pos­si­bly vio­lat­ed the man’s civ­il rights by using exces­sive force in his detain­ment. Investigators said Brown appears to be the only one hit­ting Bowman that day, fur­ther charg­ing in the fed­er­al indict­ment Brown with “depri­va­tion of rights under col­or of law.” In 2020, Bowman filed a civ­il rights law­suit against Brown and oth­er law enforce­ment agents. 

Shortly after this law­suit, state police launched an inter­nal review of the inci­dent, and believed Brown act­ing improp­er­ly, charg­ing him with one count each of aggra­vat­ed sec­ond-degree bat­tery and malfea­sance in office, and say­ing he used “exces­sive and unjus­ti­fi­able actions.” A year lat­er, fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors announced they were bring­ing the for­mer troop­er up on their own civ­il rights vio­la­tion charges. Brown was indict­ed by a fed­er­al grand jury on Sept. 23, 2021. He was charged with aggra­vat­ed sec­ond-degree bat­tery, malfea­sance in office, and fal­si­fy­ing the arrest doc­u­ments. The mis­con­duct indict­ment was Brown’s sec­ond last year. State pros­e­cu­tors charged Brown and two oth­er troop­ers with mis­de­meanor sim­ple bat­tery charges in con­nec­tion with the vio­lent 2020 arrest of anoth­er Black man, Antonio Brown. Brown led the troop­ers on a high-speed chase that end­ed with his sur­ren­der and a beat­ing that would give him “night­mares for a long time,” as the offi­cers bragged to each oth­er in text mes­sages. DA Tew is now recused from Bowman’s case and has not issued a state­ment regard­ing the new find­ings. Before recus­ing him­self, court doc­u­ments have the DA on record say­ing, the civ­il law­suit is “unfair to the offi­cers.” In a sworn court state­ment by Banks-Miley, Tew said to her on Oct. 1, 2021, “I will be frank with you, I am not going to gut the offi­cers’ defense in their civ­il case by dis­miss­ing Aaron Bowman’s crim­i­nal charge of resist­ing arrest.” According to the lawyer, Tew had an issue with the impact of the order, believ­ing by drop­ping Bowman’s charges, the civ­il suits have a bet­ter chance of win­ning. “Hey, (if) they dis­miss the civ­il case, I would look at Bowman’s charges then.”

“I tell you what, I with­draw that state­ment,” the doc­u­ment quot­ed Tew as say­ing. “I am going to pros­e­cute all of Bowman’s charges regard­less if (sic) you drop the civ­il suit or not.” Brown’s lawyer, attor­ney Scott Wolleson, is gear­ing up for bat­tle. Court doc­u­ments say they have filed a few motions request­ing to con­tin­ue his crim­i­nal tri­al in state court. Recently, the Louisiana State Police has been marred with alle­ga­tions of use of exces­sive force and racism. In June, the U.S. Justice Department announced it will be inves­ti­gat­ing the force after mean­ing­ful evi­dence has been pre­sent­ed show­ing a pat­tern of offi­cers turn­ing a blind eye to fel­low offi­cers sav­age­ly beat­ing most­ly Black men dur­ing stops. One case of spe­cial inter­est sur­rounds the death of Ronald Greene, an African American man who died while in police cus­tody fol­low­ing being assault­ed by cops in 2019.
Greene and Bowman were assault­ed with­in months of each other.