The Louisiana Senate has created a special committee consisting of seven members to investigate the use of excessive force by the State Police after evidence emerged about a series of beatings of African-American men by the troopers.

Senate President Page Cortez said that he set up the panel in response to requests from senators concerned about troopers’ behavior, the Associated Press reported.

Republican Senator Franklin Foil will be heading the panel while Democratic Senator Cleo Fields will work as his deputy.

The panel’s first meeting is expected to be held in December in which the committee will hear from the State Police and the public with an eye toward developing recommendations for tightened laws regarding use of force that legislators can consider.

The review will focus more on overall policies, rather than specific allegations of improper force, Foil said.

The Senate Select Committee on State Police Oversight will “go over what kind of oversight the State Police has when there are reports of excessive force that may have been used inappropriately and what mechanisms they have as far as safeguards,” said Foil, a lawyer, and Navy officer who has worked as a military judge.

The deadline for the panel to submit its recommendations to the full Senate is October 31, 2022.

The committee is set to examine the Louisiana State Police’s use-of-force policies as federal prosecutors are scrutinizing a series of beatings by troopers and whether top police brass obstructed justice to protect troopers involved in the deadly 2019 arrest of Ronald Greene.

The investigation began as a civil rights probe into Greene’s death, which police initially blamed on a car crash at the end of a chase near Monroe. But prosecutors’ interest has since broadened to look at other beatings and whether commanders broke the law to shelter the troopers seen on long-withheld body camera video punching, dragging, and stunning the African-American motorist.