‘Bad Apples’: Two Rogue Louisiana Cops Fired After Beating Black Men and Throwing a Teen Girl to the Ground in 24 Hours of Pure Lawless Rage
Two Alexandria, Louisiana, police officers deemed “bad apples” by the police chief were arrested by state police for malfeasance in office after allegedly using excessive force and violating other constitutional rights of citizens in three separate incidents in July caught on police bodycam vidqeo. The former officers, Austin Butler, 38, and Dylan Tritle, 32, were put on administrative leave by Alexandria Police Chief Chad Gremillion immediately after the department’s internal reporting system flagged the incidents for review on July 29. At a press briefing on Aug. 20, Gremillion and Alexandria Mayor Jacques Roy expressed their disgust as they showed the police video and further described what happened in each violent encounter between the two cops and three people they physically abused in a 24-hour period beginning on July 27. Former Alexandria Police Department officers Austin Butler (left) and Dylan Tritle (right). (Photo: Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office via KALB) In the first incident captured on video, the officers arrived at a local extended-stay motel after responding to a disturbance call about a “resident” playing music too loudly. They knock on a door, and a Black man emerges, and after expressing some frustration, he complies with their request to gather his belongings and leave the motel. As the man, with an armful of his stuff, carefully exits through the front door he lightly brushes against the officer who is standing in the doorway. A moment later that officer turns and roughly grabs the man in the hallway, causing him to drop all of his property. As he further assaults and cuffs the startled man, the officer accuses him of “battery.” ‘Get the F*** Back!’: Masked ICE Agents Target Random Black Teen During Chaotic Search for Someone Else and Bystanders Refuse to Stay Silent The man engaged in no criminal behavior and “nothing warranted what occurred,” said Roy at the briefing, noting that the man had a cellphone and other important personal property that the officers threw away in the garbage during the arrest, which police later identified as his certificate of release or discharge from active duty.“The officers appear to manufacture the scenario in which batters one of them,” the police statement said. In the second incident aired at the briefing, the officers responded to a call from employees at a local bar, The Stick, about a man who was refusing to leave. The video shows the officers enter and talk to a young Black man who is seated at a table, and tell him he has to go. The man agrees and then asks them if he can have a ride. One officer says, “I have a dog. Not unless you want to get bit.” “For real?” the man says, showing curiosity about the K-9. The officers then open the front door of the bar and stand on the threshhold watching as the man walks toward the patrol car and stops, appearing to peer in the window at the dog in the back seat. The two officers then run to the man, grab him and slam him to the ground, one punching him as the other cuffs his hands behind his back. “I didn’t do anything!” the man exclaims as he is manhandled by the officers. “I’m sorry!” “All you had to do was fu—ing leave, you dumb f—k,” one officer says. “You’re going to jail now.” Roy said the man, who had a minor injury and some swelling but was not badly hurt during the incident, “was enticed into going to that car” by the officers, who then used his contact with the car as a pretext for the “unnecessary” beat-down and arrest. The police chief said the department chose not to release video of the third incident to the public because it includes images of some juveniles at a mental health facility. But the city officials said the officers were responding to a possible riot at the facility that had calmed down and where patients were on lock-down by the time they arrived. Despite the fact the situation was “deescalated,” one of the officers “dry stunned” a non-compliant patient, a teen girl “who did not pose a threat,” with a Taser, Roy said. Then the officers threw her through a doorway to the ground. They used a level of force that “no one can say was justified,” said the mayor. The initial suspension and subsequent firing of the two officers that occurred after an internal affairs investigation by the Alexandria Police Department into “this run of rather roguish behavior” was “an intervention aimed at preventing worse incidents in the future,” said Roy, who personally reviewed the police video. “Inappropriate policing adds the most challenges to properly acting law enforcement. It becomes a danger to us all,” said the mayor, noting that it leads to “an erosion of trust” between the community and “the badge,” which he said can result in increased crime as people start to rely on “street justice” instead of calling on police. “This is a bad day for those that wear the badge,” said Gremillion. “Nowhere in my 30-plus years of law enforcement is this acceptable behavior. I was not trained this way. These officers were not trained this way. … Fortunately we caught it when we did.” “We had two bad apples. That doesn’t make for a bad tree,” the police chief continued. “We clipped the sour fruit off that tree immediately, and we are here to be transparent about it and to ensure that transparency.” Gremillion referred the criminal cases of Butler and Tritle to the Louisiana State Police, who conducted an independent investigation over two months before arresting both men for malfeasance in office on Oct. 2. Butler was also charged with one misdemeanor count of simple battery, reported KALB. Both men were booked into the Rapides Parish Detention Center and released within an hour. The Rapides Parish District Attorney’s Office will take over the prosecution of the former officers.
