In A Flash

Caddo Parish grand jury accuses 8 Shreveport police officers of using excessive force

By: Jarvis DeBerry - June 30, 2020 2:48 pm

A week after the Louisiana Legislature agreed to study police abuse in Louisiana, a grand jury in Caddo Parish handed up indictments against eight Shreveport police officers who booked two men on drug and weapons charges and running from the police Jan. 24.

Caddo Parish District Attorney James E. Stewart said in a Tuesday press release that the men initially fled the police by truck, but eventually pulled over and put their hands out of the window to signal that they were surrendering.

But Stewart says police video footage captures Shreveport police pulling the driver out of the car through his open window and as they were doing that “striking, kicking, and tasing him to the torso and other areas of his body.” The driver, Stewart said, suffered “a broken orbital plate.”

A Shreveport officer punched the car’s passenger through the open passenger’s window, the district attorney says. Other officers took him to the ground “where one officer apparently struck him in the face with a flashlight” even though the suspect’s hands were behind his back. That suspect’s nose was broken in several places.

Shreveport officers Aaron Jaudon, D’Andre Jackson, Mark Ordoyne, William Isenhour, Christopher McConnell, Brandon Walker, Treveion Brooks and David Francis were charged with one count of malfeasance each.

“The District Attorney’s office has dismissed all charges arising from the January 24, 2020, incident due to unnecessary excessive force being used by SPD officers to make the arrest,” Stewart wrote in his statement.

The Louisiana Legislature voted last week to approve a resolution by Sen. Cleo Fields of Baton Rouge to establish the Police Training, Screening, and De-escalation Task Force.

That task force, which has to convene by Aug. 15 is expected “to study and make recommendations to the legislature on the topics, among others, of training, screening, de-escalation, racial bias recognition, misconduct, duty to report misconduct, penalties, use of force, identifying and eliminating bad actors, and any other recommendations the task force deems necessary to restore the public’s trust that the law enforcement community is serving and protecting all the citizens of Louisiana in a fair and unbiased manner.”

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Jarvis DeBerry

Jarvis DeBerry, former editor of the Louisiana Illuminator, spent 22 years at The Times-Picayune (and later NOLA.com) as a crime and courts reporter, an editorial writer, columnist and deputy opinions editor. He was on the team of Times-Picayune journalists awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service after that team’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the deadly flood that followed. In addition to the shared Pulitzer, DeBerry has won awards from the Louisiana Bar Association for best trial coverage and awards from the New Orleans Press Club, the Louisiana/ Mississippi Associated Press and the National Association of Black Journalists for his columns. A collection of his Times-Picayune columns, “I Feel to Believe” was published by the University of New Orleans Press in September 2020.