A newly published graphic body camera video that was kept secret for more than two years shows a Louisiana State Police trooper pummeling a Black motorist 18 times with a flashlight — an attack the trooper defended as “pain compliance.”
In the footage, which was obtained by The Associated Press, Aaron Larry Bowman can be heard screaming between blows: “I’m not resisting! I’m not resisting!”
Wielding an 8-inch aluminum flashlight reinforced with a pointed end to shatter car glass, officer Jacob Brown, who is white, jumped out of his state police vehicle and began bashing Bowman on his head and body within two seconds of “initial contact” — unleashing 18 strikes in 24 seconds, detectives wrote in an investigative report.
“Give me your f—— hands!” the trooper shouted. “I ain’t messing with you.”
Bowman tried to explain several times that he was a dialysis patient, had done nothing wrong and wasn’t resisting, saying, “I’m not fighting you, you’re fighting me.”
Brown responded with: “Shut the f—- up!” and “You ain’t listening.”
Bowman later can be heard moaning, still on the ground. “I’m bleeding!” he said. “They hit me in the head with a flashlight!”
The May 2019 beating following a traffic stop left him with a broken jaw, three broken ribs, a broken wrist and a gash to his head that required six staples to close.
Brown, 31, later said that the blows were “pain compliance” intended to get Bowman into handcuffs. But investigators who reviewed Brown’s video months after the fact determined his use of force was not reasonable or necessary.
After the video was released, the state police released a statement Wednesday saying that Jacob Brown, the white trooper who struck Bowman, “engaged in excessive and unjustifiable actions,” failed to report the use of force to his supervisors, the AP reported.
Brown not only failed to report his use of force but mislabeled his footage as a “citizen encounter” in what investigators called “an intentional attempt to hide the video from any administrative review.”
Aside from the federal investigation, Brown faces state charges of second-degree battery and malfeasance in Bowman’s beating. He also faces state charges in two other violent arrests of Black motorists, including one he boasted about last year in a group chat with other troopers, saying the suspect is “gonna be sore” and “it warms my heart knowing we could educate that young man.”
The AP reported that “Bowman’s encounter near his Monroe home came less than three weeks after troopers from the same embattled agency punched, stunned and dragged another Black motorist, Ronald Greene, before he died in police custody on a rural roadside in northeast Louisiana. Video of Greene’s death similarly remained under wraps before AP obtained and published it earlier this year.”
Investigators who reviewed Brown’s video months after the fact determined Brown’s use of force was not reasonable or necessary.
Bowman himself hadn’t seen the footage until recently, when prosecutors from the U.S. Justice Department showed it to him and his civil attorney.
“I kept thinking I was going to die that night,” Bowman told the AP through tears in a recent interview. “It was like reliving it all over again. By watching it, I broke down all over again.”
“I don’t want nobody to go through that.”
Watch the video below. (WARNING: Graphic content).
