Louisiana State Police have reinstated a trooper who was accused of withholding graphic body-camera video in the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene, which showed another officer dragging the Black motorist by his ankle shackles, the AP reports. Lt. John Clary, the ranking trooper at the scene of Greene’s arrest, will return to active duty this week, state police spokesman Capt. Nick Manale said in an email to The Associated Press on Monday. Greene’s mother, Mona Hardin, told the AP she was surprised and disgusted that Clary was restored to duty. “It’s really like he never took the uniform off,” Hardin said. “These guys have been protected from the beginning. They know the brass have their back.
Clary had been among five officers indicted a year ago in Greene’s 2019 death that authorities initially blamed on a car crash. An AP investigation revealed long suppressed body-camera video showing white officers beating, stunning and dragging Greene as he pleaded for mercy and wailed, “I’m your brother! I’m scared!” But Clary’s reinstatement comes weeks after prosecutors dropped obstruction of justice charges against him after he agreed to testify in the negligent homicide trial of Kory York, a trooper accused of forcing Greene to lie facedown and handcuffed on the roadside for more than nine minutes. LSP Superintendent Col. Lamar Davis said Monday there were no grounds for Clary’s termination after he was cleared in the state case “We can’t just terminate someone like other organizations. We have to operate by the law and our state police rules,” Davis told AP. “As a superintendent, I have to put my personal feelings aside. Our job is to operate under the color of the law.”