Louisiana Cop Says He’s Being Fired After Accusing Colleagues Of Murder

As the US Supreme Court gives more and more cov­er to dirty cops to com­mit mur­der with­out con­se­quence, even police offi­cers are step­ping for­ward to point the fin­ger at the mur­der­ers oper­at­ing in their midst.
In this case, a sev­en (7) year vet­er­an of the Louisiana State Police who hap­pens to be African-American spoke to the media about his depart­men­t’s mur­der of Ronald Greene and the sub­se­quent coverup that ensued.

Carl Cavalier, a Black Louisiana State troop­er, said he received a notice of ter­mi­na­tion from his job after going on the record with local news out­lets, accus­ing oth­er offi­cers of mur­der. He also is accus­ing the Baton Rouge police depart­ment of an inter­nal cov­er-up to pro­tect the offi­cers. NBC News reports Cavalier is vow­ing to appeal his ter­mi­na­tion and get his job back. Cavalier sat down for an on-cam­era inter­view with local Baton Rouge news sta­tion WBRZ in June, explain­ing what he believes is an inter­nal cov­er-up by the Louisiana State Police to pro­tect the offi­cers involved in the killing of Ronald Greene. At the time, Cavalier came down on the depart­ment in his inter­view with WBRZ say­ing he believed there were “mur­der­ers” still work­ing with the depart­ment. “Guys who received a slap on the wrist for their roles in the Ronald Greene inci­dent are unpun­ished… patrolling the streets and left on the job,” he told the outlet.

He lat­er said in anoth­er inter­view that he did­n’t expect some­thing like this to hap­pen at his place of employ­ment. “I guess it cre­at­ed like a shock to me, cre­at­ed like a lev­el of dis­ap­point­ment that I’m still recov­er­ing from now. The fact that these guys are active­ly cov­er­ing up a mur­der,” Cavalier said. According to CNN, Greene died in May of 2019 fol­low­ing a police chase near Monroe, Louisiana. The vic­tim’s fam­i­ly was told by the depart­ment that Greene was killed in a car crash. Body cam­era footage released two years lat­er shows Greene was tased, kicked, and beat­en by troop­ers until he died while in police cus­tody, as Blavity pre­vi­ous­ly reported

Journalist Lea Skene wrote the fol­low­ing for the Advocate

When protests erupt­ed fol­low­ing the 2016 fatal police shoot­ing of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana State Police Trooper Carl Cavalier felt pulled in two direc­tions, strug­gling to bal­ance his com­mit­ment to law enforce­ment with a grow­ing affin­i­ty for racial jus­tice activism. Years lat­er, after details start­ed trick­ling out about how the Black motorist Ronald Greene died fol­low­ing a bru­tal 2019 encounter with troop­ers in the Monroe area, Cavalier pub­lished a fic­tion­al book under a pseu­do­nym, based on his real-life expe­ri­ences as a Black man and law enforce­ment offi­cer in Louisiana. He also leaked inter­nal State Police records about the Greene case and pub­licly crit­i­cized the agency in recent media inter­views, all extra­or­di­nary steps that land­ed him in seri­ous hot water Cavalier was recent­ly noti­fied he faces a five-week unpaid sus­pen­sion for vio­lat­ing State Police poli­cies by pub­lish­ing his book — a pun­ish­ment more severe than the agency has met­ed out to almost any of the troop­ers involved in the vio­lent arrest that left Greene dead and the appar­ent coverup that followed. 

The dis­crep­an­cy in dis­ci­pline has raised eye­brows as State Police lead­ers scram­ble to restore pub­lic trust in the agency by demon­strat­ing their com­mit­ment to root­ing out racist behav­ior and hold­ing troop­ers account­able for mis­con­duct. “I am com­pelled to express my extreme and pro­found dis­may over the recent dis­ci­pli­nary action tak­en against a troop­er for his hon­est com­ments rel­a­tive to the death of a sus­pect,” state Sen. Cleo Fields wrote in a let­ter to State Police Superintendent Col. Lamar Davis this week, not­ing the appar­ent lack of account­abil­i­ty for some troop­ers with direct involve­ment in the Greene case. “This is not the kind of impres­sion that fos­ters pub­lic con­fi­dence,” Fields wrote. In an inter­view Friday, Fields said law enforce­ment offi­cers have a duty to inter­vene when they see their col­leagues com­mit­ting mis­con­duct, but “they can’t do that when they’re get­ting sanc­tioned for seek­ing out.

Penalizing the leakers

A fed­er­al civ­il rights probe is ongo­ing, focused on sev­er­al instances of exces­sive force involv­ing the Monroe-based Troop F. Advocates, attor­neys and law­mak­ers are ramp­ing up demands for a more com­pre­hen­sive “pat­tern or prac­tice” inves­ti­ga­tion, which would like­ly result in a con­sent decree forc­ing reforms at State Police. But the Department of Justice has not con­firmed the exis­tence of such a probe. In the case that first land­ed State Police under scruti­ny, Greene took his last breaths on a dark Union Parish road­way, where troop­ers bru­tal­ly beat and repeat­ed­ly tased the unarmed man fol­low­ing a lengthy high-speed chase and crash. The details of his death became pub­lic thanks to leaked body cam­era footage. Fields penned his let­ter after recent reports that the rank­ing troop­er on scene that night, Lt. John Clary, was cleared fol­low­ing an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into whether he kept his body cam­era video secret from inves­ti­ga­tors. Clary received no dis­ci­pline for his actions, even though the footage was miss­ing from the orig­i­nal file sent to state pros­e­cu­tors. The videos were final­ly turned over ear­li­er this year — only after a State Police inves­ti­ga­tor learned of them dur­ing an unre­lat­ed con­ver­sa­tion with a train­ing instructor.

During a press con­fer­ence Friday, Davis sought to explain why Clary received no dis­ci­pline, say­ing inves­ti­ga­tors were unable to deter­mine whether Clary con­cealed the videos on pur­pose. He said the inves­ti­ga­tion could be reopened in the future. After watch­ing the press con­fer­ence, state Rep. Ted James tweet­ed a list of crit­i­cisms, includ­ing an inad­e­quate expla­na­tion from Davis about why Cavalier received more dis­ci­pline “than the troop­ers he exposed.” “It seems like they have been more focused on try­ing to penal­ize the folks that are leak­ing the infor­ma­tion, and not the peo­ple iden­ti­fied in the videos for vio­lat­ing the law,” he said in an inter­view. Davis also said dur­ing the press con­fer­ence he was unable to com­ment on the appar­ent dis­crep­an­cies in dis­ci­pline because Cavalier planned to appeal his sus­pen­sion, mean­ing the case was still tech­ni­cal­ly ongo­ing. But Davis promised to be “fair and equi­table” in all dis­ci­pli­nary mat­ters He had received a warn­ing let­ter after appear­ing on WBRZ-TV in June, with super­vi­sors remind­ing him of a pol­i­cy against com­ment­ing pub­licly in the media. Then in July came more media appear­ances and the book release. Last month, Cavalier spoke to WWL-TV in New Orleans, once again pres­sur­ing agency lead­ers to hold more troop­ers account­able in the Greene case.

“I con­sid­ered it a mur­der,” he said dur­ing the inter­view. “Because why else would we hes­i­tate to be trans­par­ent about it? Why else would we not do our jobs and hold these guys account­able? Why else? What oth­er rea­son?” Read more here.
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