Louisiana Cops Beat a Naked Inmate During a Strip Search. Long Withheld Video Shows He Was Compliant.
Although the officers were eventually criminally convicted, Jarius Brown is still pursuing damages to cover the medical expenses for serious injuries to his face, nose, and chest.
Footage from six years ago finally surfaced earlier this month, revealing the brutal beating of Jarius Brown by two Louisiana State Police (LSP) officers in 2019. Despite internal police records stating that "there was no way of defending" the assault, state police ultimately backed the deputies' claim that it was Brown, not the officers, who was the aggressor.
On September 27, 2019, Brown was arrested for possession of marijuana and taken to the DeSoto Parish Detention Center in Mansfield, Louisiana. While changing into prison clothing, surveillance footage shows two officers, Deputy Javarrea Pouncy and Deputy DeMarkes Grant, punching the naked 25-year-old repeatedly after Brown didn't squat as directed during a strip search. The officers landed 50 punches, which continued even after Brown fell to the ground.
After the attack, body camera video shows Brown—badly beaten and nearly unconscious—requesting to go to the hospital. According to the lawsuit he later filed, Brown "suffer[ed] from substantial injuries to his face, nose, and chest," and "struggled to remain conscious" during the visit. He also "experienced mental and emotional trauma from the beating."
"This went beyond excessive," Andrew Scott, a former police chief of Boca Raton, Florida, told the Associated Press after reviewing the footage. "This is something I would refer to as being brutalized." Scott also said that "there was no reason to throw the number of punches that they did," describing Brown as "absolutely compliant."
Following the incident, Grant was suspended and Pouncy was forced to resign, but local officials refused to release the video. Even if the video had been released, District Attorney Charles Adams told the A.P., the state police report would have made prosecution almost impossible. The report, according to the A.P., described Brown as the aggressor and determined that the officers took appropriate action. State investigators agreed that the footage supported the officers' claims and did not press charges against Grant or Pouncy.
Federal prosecutors, however, did choose to pursue charges against the deputies and accused both men of falsifying their reports. Pouncy pleaded guilty in 2023 for willfully using unreasonable force, failing to obtain medical care, and obstructing justice. He is currently serving a three-year sentence in federal prison. Grant later pleaded guilty in 2024 to obstruction charges for the filing of false reports and to willfully using unreasonable force against Brown, and was released in April after serving a 10-month sentence.
But despite these criminal convictions, holding these officers truly accountable remains elusive. Today, almost exactly six years after the attack, Brown is still pursuing damages in state court for his injuries and medical expenses. Brown also remains blocked from filing a federal lawsuit alleging that the officers used unconstitutional excessive force against him, unless and until the United States Supreme Court chooses to overturn Louisiana's statute of limitations on filing claims against state actors for violating civil rights.
It's taken years for Brown to hold the officers who brutalized him accountable because leaders at the state level have failed—or refused—to reform what the Justice Department found to be a "statewide pattern…of using excessive force, which violates the Fourth Amendment" across the LSP in January 2025. Federal oversight may have helped Brown, but it can't be relied upon to provide relief for the many other cases of police misconduct and abuse in Louisiana that aren't caught on camera.
