Three Baton Rogue, Louisiana, police officers are on administrative leave after a series of federal lawsuits exposing the abuse and sexual humiliation taking place at an unmarked torture warehouse known as the “Brave Cave” that was operated by members of the Baton Rouge police department (BRPD).
Baton Rouge’s police chief, Murphy Paul, told city councilors on Wednesday night that the department would hold itself accountable as the FBI investigates alleged civil rights violations at the agency stemming from the “allegations that members of the department may have abused their authority”.
Paul noted during the meeting that the Brave Cave, which had been used to process “prisoners” after an arrest, had received nine complaints, four of which resulted in criminal investigations, the Advocate reported.
The alleged abuse by the Street Crimes unit at what was known as the narcotics processing facility echoed past incidents of police misconduct and abuse at off-site facilities. Those facilities include Homan Square in Chicago, where police officers detained thousands of people, most of whom were Black, at a warehouse on the city’s west side.
It also arises at a time when specialized police units have come under scrutiny for abusive policing practices after the beating death of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers involved with the now defunct Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace in Our Neighborhoods (Scorpion) unit.
Not long after the abuse allegations surfaced in lawsuits, Baton Rouge’s mayor, Sharon Weston Broome, disbanded the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination (Brave) unit and the city’s police department reassigned its officers. The BRPD also “permanently closed” its warehouse facility.
One of the officers placed on leave, Troy Lawrence Sr, is a deputy chief at the agency who previously led the disbanded Street Crimes unit, the Advocate reported, and the father of an officer named in the lawsuit.
That officer, Troy Lawrence Jr, resigned in August from the agency after he received several complaints throughout the years. Lawrence faces a battery charge in a separate incident in which he “drive-stunned” a man in the back of a patrol car in August.
A series of lawsuits filed in recent weeks detailed the suffering that was inflicted behind the walls of the Brave Cave by Baton Rouge police. The department was previously under scrutiny after an officer killed Alton Sterling outside a convenience store in 2016 – a moment that reignited racial justice protests.
In one case filed last week, a grandmother, Ternell Brown, had been detained at the facility in June after a traffic stop by officers Lawrence Jr and Matthew Wallace. They noticed two different prescription pills in the same bottle. Despite her offering to show validation for the prescriptions, they brought her to the Brave Cave, where they asked her to undress and “forced her to spread her vagina and buttocks for inspection”, according to the lawsuit. They ultimately released her without criminal charges.
In a separate case filed less than a month ago, Jeremy Lee, 21, claimed that officers allegedly used “excessive force” on him at the warehouse after he was arrested “without reasonable suspicion or probable cause”, CNN reported.
Officers, who allegedly switched their body cameras on and off during the incident, took Lee to the warehouse where they allegedly beat him, resulting in him being hospitalized with a fractured rib. Police later charged Lee with “resisting an officer”, according to court documents.
