Analysis finds La State Police uses force disproportionately against Black people

By Greg LaRose
Contributing Writer

(lailluminator.com) – A three-year analysis of Louisiana State Police data shows troopers use force against Black people at a rate that’s out of proportion with their share of the state’s population.

Black residents represent 31 percent of Louisiana population, yet they accounted for 902 use-of-force incidents involving state troopers from 2022-24, or 60.5 percent of all recorded, according to a data analysis report from Innocence and Justice Louisiana. White residents, who account for 61 percent of the state population, were involved in 341 or 23 percent.

Another 11 percent of use-of-force incidents were reported with the race of the suspect listed as unknown, which could mean the disparities could be higher or lower, said Esme Lee, data and community coordinator for Innocence and Justice Louisiana.

“There was a high category of unknown citizen race entries in that incident data, so that does limit the precision of our analysis,” Lee said.

Racial disparities were present across all 10 State Police regional troops, with the largest occurring in Troop D in Southwest Louisiana, according to the report. Black and Native American residents in that area were involved in use of force incidents at a rate three times higher than their population percentages.

Capt. Russell Graham, State Police public affairs commander, said the data provided to Innocence and Justice Louisiana doesn’t provide the complete picture. In response to questions about the group’s findings, Graham provided the Illuminator a breakdown for 2024 that separates LSP vehicle pursuit interventions, or how troopers ended chases, from other uses of force. He acknowledged these details were not provided to Innocence and Justice Louisiana for its data analysis.

“While the numbers are accurate, it’s not a fair depiction of our stats,” Graham said about the Innocence and Justice report.

Lee said her organization considered how the FBI collects and reports use-of-force data for its database. The bureau does not exclude vehicle pursuits, listing them as a “reason for initial contact.”

“LSP’s current practice of including pursuits in its use-of-force data is therefore not inconsistent with national standards; rather, it reflects a more granular, tactic-level approach to capturing high-risk enforcement actions,” Lee said. “Reclassifying pursuits outside of use-of-force reporting would reduce transparency and break continuity with both LSP’s historical data and broader accountability norms.”

The State Police breakdown shows troopers ended 303 vehicle pursuits in 2024 with “termination techniques” such as stop spikes and other tire deflation devices. At the end of those pursuits, troopers used their stun guns 33 times, were “hands on” with suspects in 26 incidents and used firearms twice.

Graham said the vast majority of Louisiana State Police pursuits are related to speeding motorists.

“We’re not looking at anything besides speed,” he said. “You’re not looking at the color of someone’s skin, whether they’re male or female or even what they’re driving. It’s troopers running down the road in one direction, catching somebody speeding in the opposite direction.”

Whether race is a factor in pursuits is analytically distinct from whether their impacts are racially disparate, Lee said. The Innocence and Justice report does not assert Louisiana State Police’s use of force is racially motivated, she stressed. Instead, it documents the disparate outcomes of such incidents.

“The analysis evaluates how policing is experienced and distributed in practice – not the subjective intent of individual officers,” Lee said. “Even when pursuits are initiated for speeding, repeated exposure to police contact, including pursuits, systematically increases the likelihood of escalation, serious use of force and harm. This distinction between causation and impact is intentional and central to the analysis.”

Separate from its vehicle pursuits, State Police reported 73 more “hands on” use-of-force incidents, 20 Taser incidents, two firearm discharges and one use of a chemical agent in 2024.

After reviewing the data compilation from State Police, Lee noted it includes the same racial discrepancies as her report. It shows 307 Black suspects (64%) were involved in use-of-force and pursuit incidents, compared with 102 white suspects (21%).

Public has struggled to access police discipline data
Lee’s data work will be uploaded to the Louisiana Law Enforcement Accountability Database, or LLEAD for short. The project that is independent of any policy agency will allow the public to search online for officers with a history of infractions.

“The genesis of LLEAD was really wanting to be able to track officer histories of conduct and identify those patterns and practices of misconduct in order to aid our own case review,” Lee said, “but also to provide a public resource to individuals to hold officers accountable.”

The organization, which focuses on post-conviction relief for the wrongly incarcerated, is gathering information from more than 600 police agencies across the state to catalog complaints and use-of-force incidents.

A state law approved last year requires police departments statewide to report all use-of-force incidents that result in bodily injury. The impetus for the Shantel Arnold Act was a 2021 incident in which a Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputy was captured dragging the law’s namesake, a Black woman, by her hair and slamming her into the ground. The sheriff’s office settled a civil lawsuit Arnold brought for $300,000, but the agency continued to employ her assailant, Deputy Jose Alvarado, despite a lengthy record of excessive force complaints.

Innocence and Justice is seeking all complaints against law enforcement officers for its database, including those deemed unsubstantiated through internal investigations to avoid instances where departments opted against discipline or dismissal for problem officers, Lee said.

The group has also requested full officer history reports from the Louisiana Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, the state body that certifies police. Lee said the council wants to charge Innocence and Justice $30,000 to fill its public records request, a cost that’s too pricey for the nonprofit.

Reached by phone, POST Council executive director Jim Craft, a former Lafayette police chief, could not confirm or deny the cost of records provided to Innocence and Justice. He did say a request of that scope would create a tremendous workload for his staff, who he described as “very small and very busy.” The council tracks the status of some 28,000 law enforcement officers in Louisiana.

State law requires police departments to notify the POST Council in instances of officer misconduct. The council, composed of police chiefs, prosecutors and the state attorney general, can revoke an officer’s certification, often a requirement to hold a job in law enforcement.

The disciplinary reporting also allows police departments to research a job applicant’s work and disciplinary history when hiring. New hires, retirements, resigna-ions and deaths must also be reported, but Craft said not all police agencies provide this information on a timely basis.

He expressed reservations about the Innocence and Justice LLEAD project because it will include unfounded complaints, resulting in some officers being wrongly “branded.”

Graham said recent technology upgrades for Louisiana State Police will allow the agency to dive deeper into its use-of-force data so that it could inform training and practices for troopers. An online dashboard to make the information available to the public might also lie ahead, he added.

Lee said she is encouraged that State Police “is investing resources in transparency and data accessibility.”

This article originally published in the January 19, 2026 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.