'Like an animal': Bodycam footage shows LMPD misconduct in case highlighted by DOJ

It was an incident mentioned in the opening paragraphs of the Department of Justice’s damning investigation of the Louisville Metro Police Department: After a car chase, a police officer grabbed an already-surrendered 20-year-old Black man by his dreadlocks and slammed his face into the ground, later shouting that he would drag him through the dirt and treat him like a “f---ing animal.”

The DOJ included the anecdote in a section of its report dedicated to how LMPD fails to “respond appropriately to officers who express explicit racial bias and animus.” And U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland referenced LMPD officers calling Black people “monkeys,” “animal” and “boy” within minutes of taking the stage in Louisville to announce the DOJ’s findings of its nearly two-year-long investigation in March.

The DOJ said the Black man whose head was slammed into the ground in 2020 posed no threat to the officer and that LMPD never examined whether the officer’s references to the man as an “animal” were racially prejudiced.

In May, documents publicly released by the city identified the officer involved as Nathaniel Richardson. He was suspended for 10 days last year for violating the department’s policies on use of force, firearm handling and courtesy in the incident.

Now, video obtained by The Courier Journal under Kentucky’s Open Records Act, alongside an analysis of those written use-of-force and misconduct investigation documents released in May, sheds further light on additional misconduct, potential misconduct and dangerous behaviors in that June 4, 2020, incident, including those where the officer:

• Uses his cell phone in a manner consistent with texting while driving at over 100 miles per hour pursuing a suspect on a Kentucky interstate.

• Aims his gun out of his patrol car’s window during the chase.

• Carries his pistol by its slide in a manner an investigator characterized as reckless.

• Runs across a “busy roadway” in pursuit of a suspect, including running past a vehicle that fellow officers believed could have armed suspects inside.

The incident underscores the DOJ’s findings that LMPD supervisors fail to identify misconduct, and that discipline, when it does occur, can come years down the line and have a muted effect.

While supervisors raised a red flag on Richardson’s use of foul language, multiple senior officers who reviewed the incident did not appear to find issue with him slamming the suspect’s head into the ground, using his phone while driving or mishandling his firearm.

“Officer Richardson was verbally counselled on the use of profanity when dealing with the public and SOP 5.1.11 Courtesy. Officer needs to remain courteous, civil, and exercise patience with the public,” wrote Sgt. James Talley in a note on a use-of-force report.

“No further action appears necessary at this time,” wrote Lt. Christopher Watkins, who noted that the “officer issues” mentioned in the report had been addressed.

It was only when Maj. Shannon Lauder reviewed the incident, after it had already been reviewed by several other supervising officers, that an internal affairs investigation was recommended.

In its March report, the DOJ found LMPD supervisors “routinely overlook or even defend obviously excessive force.”

And in Courier Journal reviews of the DOJ’s accounts of incidents compared to LMPD’s use of force reports regarding those same incidents, there were multiple instances where the use-of-force reports were dramatically different from what the DOJ described.

In May, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said his administration would publicly release video footage, where it exists, of incidents described in the DOJ report. However, the city said the videos had to be redacted first.

Despite an investigation being opened into Richardson’s incident within a few months, the investigation progressed slowly, with the officer interviewed in late February 2022, more than a year and a half after the incident.

In that interview, Richardson would maintain he handled his firearm proficiently by aiming it out the window, despite the facts that it was against policy, not taught in LMPD’s training academy and that deadly force was not authorized in that situation.

Additionally, Richardson denied that he slammed the suspect’s head into the ground, saying instead that he pulled his head up to see if he was OK, fearing that he’d been shot or injured when his car crashed.

"I think it's probably No. 1 on the list for any competent police administrative structure and staff to investigate those kinds of things quickly and make the officers accountable as rapidly as possible," Peter Kraska, a criminal justice professor at Eastern Kentucky University and an expert on the militarization of U.S. policing, told The Courier Journal. "A culture of accountability in a police department probably should be mission No. 1. Particularly in a police department like Louisville, which has had its trouble in the past."

LMPD did not respond to questions from The Courier Journal regarding the Richardson case.

This story is part of The Courier Journal’s continuing coverage of incidents mentioned in, or related to, the findings of the DOJ’s wide-ranging investigation of LMPD.

Previous coverage: ‘Slap on the hand’: How LMPD officers involved in egregious misconduct remain on the force

More: 'An intimidation thing': LMPD's misconduct complaint process leaves citizens discouraged

The officer grabbed the man's head by his dreadlocks

Shortly before midnight on June 3, 2020, Richardson was in the Wyandotte neighborhood a few blocks from Churchill Downs when he began following a vehicle confirmed as stolen in an armed carjacking the night before.

After trying to stop the vehicle, the stolen Subaru fled, winding through residential streets before eventually getting onto the interstate.

Richardson and other officers pursued the vehicle on the highway for nearly 20 minutes, following it out of Jefferson County and into Shelby County on I-64 while reaching speeds of 100 to 120 miles per hour.

In Shelby County, the suspect's car began to slow.

As this happened, Richardson pulled out his pistol and pointed it through his car's window, which initially remained rolled up.

The suspect’s vehicle then attempted to cross the median and crashed, according to an LMPD investigator. When this happened, Richardson pulled over, got out and rushed across the median and the interstate lanes on the other side.

“Get on the f---ing ground now! Get on the f---ing ground or I’m going to f---ing kill you! Get on the f---ing ground!” Richardson yelled as he ran up on the 20-year-old Black man with his gun drawn.

While the man cannot be seen the first time Richardson issues an order to get on the ground, the man appears lying on the ground with his hand spread to the side as he comes into the view of the body camera a few seconds later.

(Louisville Metro Government provided body camera footage from Richardson, but not other officers present at the scene.)

“Get on the f---ing ground!” Richardson yelled at the man again as he lay on the ground. “Put your f---ing hands behind your f---ing back!”

Richardson then grabbed the man’s head by his dreadlocks, pulled him up, and said “what the f---?” before slamming his head into the pavement face-first.

Immediately after letting go of the man’s head, another officer, Jeremiah Nimmo, can be heard shouting “what the f--- are you doing? You moron!” at Richardson.

Interviewed more than two years after the incident by investigators, Nimmo said he didn’t yell at Richardson about the use of force, but rather because Richardson ran across a busy roadway and failed to check the wrecked vehicle for additional suspects, who could be armed, creating a safety risk for officers.

According to a use-of-force report, Nimmo was verbally counselled for yelling at Richardson, with a supervisor writing: “Officers need to remain courteous and civil with one another.”

After handcuffing the detained Black man, Richardson patted him down and then told him to stand up. When the man did not immediately comply, Richardson began dragging him, saying: “Okay, I’ll drag you. If you don’t want to move, I’ll drag you. I’ll drag you through the f---ing dirt like an animal if you don’t want to move.”

Later, after the young man had been sitting down, Richardson told him to get up again.

“If you don’t to move, I’m going to treat you like a f---ing animal,” Richardson said.

LMPD documents did not identify the detained man, although the DOJ described him as being 20 years old at the time of the incident. A 20-year-old man matching that description and arrested at the scene was later sentenced to 91 months in federal prison for carjacking.

The incident came less than six months after Richardson was involved in another use-of-force situation in which a supervisor said the officer put his hands around a man's throat. An investigator found no wrongdoing in that incident, but in November 2021, then-Chief Erika Shields overruled that finding and suspended Richardson for three days, writing that he violated the department's vascular restraint policy in a situation where deadly force was not authorized.

According to documents obtained by The Courier Journal, Richardson had told investigators he used a vascular restraint after he observed the man reach for another officer's gun belt.

According to a May 23 list of all LMPD officers provided to The Courier Journal, Richardson remains on the force.

Delayed discipline

In November 2022, more than two years after the highway incident, Shields suspended Richardson for 10 days, writing that he had violated LMPD policies on care of firearms, courtesy and use of force, calling his handling of his weapon “careless and imprudent” and writing that the use of force was not appropriate “due to the subject complying with your verbal commands.”

Speaking to Professional Standards Unit investigators, Richardson described being low on sleep after spending days working the “riots” in downtown Louisville on top of his normal patrol duties. He also expressed frustration with the number of reports of cars stolen at gunpoint.

He denied slamming the man’s head in the ground, saying instead he saw him drop to the ground and worried that he had been shot or collapsed from an injury sustained in the crash.

“So I get up to him, I grab him by his hair and check his eyes real quick, and he looks okay, so I’m like, okay, you’re alive, you’re fine,” Richardson recounted to investigators.

Richardson added that method was “the most prudent way that I could tell that he was alive.”

He admitted he may have said “some uncouth” things out of frustration.

Richardson, who had been on the force for over a year at the time of the incident, defended aiming his gun out the window, saying he felt he would be proficient using a firearm in that situation, and he feared occupants in the car he was chasing might open fire.

“I didn’t want to give them the opportunity to just blow my brains out and not have an opportunity to defend myself,” he told investigators.

However, the internal affairs investigation determined that deadly force was not authorized and his handling of the weapon was reckless.

A firearms training expert contacted by The Courier Journal also found the incident disturbing.

“I know they do that in the movies all the time, but that’s not appropriate for several reasons,” said Marlan Ingram, a former Federal Reserve law enforcement officer and director of training at Openrange Shooting Sports in Crestwood.

Chief among the dangers of firing out a car’s window, Ingram said, would be the increased chance of missing and hitting innocent bystanders.

Potential misconduct, dangerous behavior not probed

Although internal affairs conducted an investigation, there were other instances of potential misconduct and dangerous behaviors that were not addressed.

In body camera footage of the chase, Richardson can be seen picking up and using his cell phone while driving at over 100 miles per hour. The city blurred out the phone’s screen in video footage provided to The Courier Journal, making it hard to see exactly what he is doing, but his fingers move on the screen in a pattern consistent with texting.

LMPD policy and Kentucky law prohibit texting while driving. LMPD policy “strongly” discourages talking on cell phones while driving, unless using a hands-free method.

No supervisors who reviewed the incident mentioned Richardson using his cell phone, and investigators did not probe the incident or ask Richardson about it.

In body camera footage, Richardson could also be heard using misogynistic curse words during the chase. Internal affairs investigated (and exonerated) Richardson for prejudice over those comments. However, his later remarks threatening to treat a Black man like an "animal" were not part of that prejudice probe.

While Richardson got into trouble for aiming his gun out the window of his car while driving, another potential mishandling of his firearm was not addressed.

As he was getting out of the vehicle after pulling up on the wrecked car, he transferred the pistol from his right hand to his left, grabbing it by the gun’s slide while he shut the door.

While an investigator described this as “recklessly transitioning” the gun in an interview with Richardson, it was not referenced in the investigative findings.

Richardson maintained that grabbing the gun by its slide was the “most proficient way” to get out of the car.

“Once you pull it out [of the holster], you do not alter that grip,” said Ingram, the firearms instructor. “That’s not policy, that’s just proper gun handling.”

The failure of supervising officers to flag misconduct in this case and others is likely the result of a "culture of tolerance" for misconduct, the "blue wall of secrecy" or a combination of the two, said Kraska, the EKU professor.

"It's hard for the typical person to comprehend the amount of cultural pressure there is, in some police departments, to make other officers accountable," he said. "It's an intense amount of pressure informally to leave those kinds of things alone."

Reach reporter Josh Wood at jwood@courier-journal.com or on Twitter at @JWoodJourno

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: New bodycam footage shows LMPD misconduct in case highlighted by DOJ