Saturday, August 6, 2011
Examiner
After almost three days of deliberating, the jury in Danziger Bridge trial found all five officers guilty on all 25 counts. Though the officers were able to escape murder charges for Ronald Madison and James Brissette, the verdict is still an overwhelming rejection of the defense these officers put up and a major victory for the prosecution, the victims and their families.
Four NOPD officers were on trial for unjustly killing two unarmed people and wounding four others on the Danziger Bridge six days after Hurricane Katrina. They, along with a fifth officer, were also being charged for their roles in the cover-up that followed. The defense had always maintained that the officers were innocent and that they had every reason to believe the victims were armed. Their lawyers constantly referred to the shootings as justified. Today, the jury disagreed with them...[Full Article]
Labels: Danziger Bridge, Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
Friday, April 1, 2011
Raw Story
CHICAGO – Two New Orleans police officers convicted of shooting and burning a man in the 2005 post-Hurricane Katrina chaos were sentenced to 25 and 17 years in jail for their crimes, officials said Thursday.
They were two of three police officers convicted in December in the September 2, 2005 slaying which was not investigated until early 2009 -- shortly after a high-profile media report.
Former NOPD Officer Warren was sentenced to 25 years for shooting a fleeing Henry Glover, 31, from the balcony of a police station.
Glover's brother and a friend flagged down a passing motorist, who put the mortally wounded man in his car to try to get medical attention for him.
When the men drove up to a makeshift police station seeing help, the police officers surrounded them at gunpoint, handcuffed them and let Glover die in the back seat of the car.
Greg McRae, who maintains his position with the department, was sentenced to 17 years in jail for driving off with the car, with Glover's body inside, and burning both the body and the car with a traffic flare...[Full Article]
Labels: Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, New Orleans, police
Thursday, December 2, 2010
NEW ORLEANS (CBS/AP) Michael Hunter stood quietly as a judge sentenced the former New Orleans police officer Wednesday to eight years in federal prison for his role in the coverup and deadly shooting of unarmed civilians after Hurricane Katrina.
The sentence from U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance was the maximum allowed, and nine months more than sentencing guidelines recommended.
Vance called the police shooting on the Danziger Bridge that killed two and wounded four civilians, "sickeningly brutal."
Hunter admitted firing at the people on the bridge, even though he knew they were unarmed and posed no threat, but said he did not hit anyone. But Vance pointed out that he did nothing to stop his fellow officers from firing, in fact watching "an officer shoot Ronald Madison in the back at close range."
Ronald Madison, 40, and mentally disabled, and James Brissette, 19, were killed and four wounded as they crossed the bridge in search of food five days after Katrina struck Aug. 29, 2005...[Full Article]
Labels: Danziger Bridge, Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, shootings
Friday, November 19, 2010
Murder and Burning of Henry Glover by New Orleans Police During Katrina Aftermath
NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans police officer was laughing after he burned the body of a man who had been gunned down by police in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, a fellow officer testified Thursday.
The testimony came during the trial of officer Greg McRae and Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann, who are charged with burning the body of 31-year-old Henry Glover in a car after he was shot and killed by a different officer outside a strip mall on Sept. 2, 2005. Three other current and former officers also are charged in Glover's death...
[Full Article]NOPD officer describes scene after car with Henry Glover's body inside was set afire
A New Orleans police officer who admits to torching a car containing a human body in the days after Hurricane Katrina was laughing as he ran away from the macabre scene, a colleague testified Thursday in federal court.
View full sizeLt. Joseph Meisch, left, said he saw Officer Greg McRae, right, running down an Algiers levee on Sept. 2, 2005, with a plume of smoke behind him.
Lt. Joseph Meisch, who was given immunity for his testimony, said he saw Officer Greg McRae running down an Algiers levee on Sept. 2, 2005, with a plume of smoke behind him. With McRae was Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann, who Meisch described as having a "blank, nonchalant look." Neither officer appeared upset or concerned at the time, he said.
After they ran into Meisch, McRae allegedly told him, "Don't worry about it."
Scheuermann added, "I got it," Meisch testified Thursday...
[Full Article]Labels: Henry Glover, Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, murder, police
Friday, September 24, 2010
Former New Orleans Police Officer Jeffrey Lehrmann was sentenced Wednesday to three years in federal prison for his part in the cover-up of the Danziger Bridge shootings, our partners at the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported today.
Lehrmann is one of 11 officers who have been charged in the Sept. 4, 2005 incident, in which police officers opened fire on unarmed civilians, killing two and wounding four others. He was the first of five officers to cooperate with federal investigators...
[Full Article]Labels: Danziger Bridge, Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, New Orleans, police
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Remembering Hurricane Katrina : 5 Years Later...Gun Confiscations and Executions
The video you will see on this web site is horrifying. The crimes committed against law-abiding gun owners are beyond comprehension. The arrogance of anti-gun politicians and government officials and their hate of freedom will churn your stomach.
The law is the law, the Constitution is the Constitution. If ONE local mayor or police chief can decide what the Second Amendment means, it opens the door to tyranny—where ANY mayor or police chief can say what the Second Amendment means.
You've seen this brand of abuse of freedom in the history books—in the pages about days of gun confiscations leading to the terror of Stalin, Mao and Hitler. But you'd never in a million years think it could happen in America.
Well, it can and it did. And it will happen again unless we take action today.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, Police Superintendent P. Eddie Compass unleashed a wave of confiscations with these chilling words:
"No one will be able to be armed. We will take all weapons. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns."
Thousands of firearms were then confiscated from law-abiding gun owners. The police gave no paperwork or receipts for those guns. They just stormed in and seized them.
With your help we're going to make the first time in New Orleans the LAST time in America. Thank you!
Now, one year later, these crimes against gun owners have snowballed into a far greater threat to our freedoms.
Even though NRA secured a court order demanding their immediate and unconditional return, almost every single confiscated firearm remains locked in government trailers.
With the stroke of a pen, Mayor Nagin and Police Superintendent Compass are getting away with "murder"—a savaging of the second, fourth and fourteenth amendments of our Constitution. And they have put America on notice that they're going to keep seizing lawfully owned guns under any pretense.
New Orleans gun owners are showing up at these trailers, with serial numbers of their firearms, expecting Mayor Nagin and his band of anti-gunners to respect the Federal courts.
They are met by stony-eyed bureaucrats who say serial numbers aren't enough—and that gun owners now need PROOF OF PURCHASE of these firearms.
How many of those gun owners do you think had original receipts for those firearms? And even if they did, how many do you think could find those receipts in the wreckage of a hurricane?
Many of these firearms were passed down from father to son, generation to generation. Some are precious heirlooms. Some are collector's pieces won in our wars. And they were all lawfully owned and they must be returned to their owners.
With your help we're going to make the first time in New Orleans the LAST time in America. Thank you!
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National Guard Confiscating Guns in New Orleans
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Katrina Cops lined up "like at a firing range" and shot unarmed mentally retarded man in the back
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- New Orleans police lined up "like at a firing range" and fatally shot an unarmed man in the back as he fled from them in the days after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore, a witness to the shooting told CNN.
It marks the first time a witness has come forward publicly with information about the shooting of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally retarded man whose death has sparked a police investigation and a grand jury probe into what happened in and around the Danziger Bridge that day.
"He just fell like he was collapsing," Kasimir Gaston told CNN. "Like something just wiped him out." (Watch Gaston describe what he saw )
Gaston was one of many flood refugees living on the second floor of the Friendly Inn, a low-income motel on the city's east side. On Sunday, September 4 of last year, he says he woke up and stepped onto the balcony of the motel and saw a man running, hands outstretched and being fired upon.
Initial police accounts said that Madison reached for his waistband and turned on police, but Gaston said Madison did not appear to have a weapon and that he was running away from police "hands out, full speed" when he was shot.
Police declined CNN's request for an interview.
After the shooting last year, police said officers had responded to reported gunshots on the Danziger Bridge and that a running gunbattle ensued with six suspects.
One teenager was killed near the base of the bridge and three other people were wounded, according to police reports.
A police department press release from October 4, 2005, said Madison, described as an unidentified gunman, was "confronted by a New Orleans Police officer. The suspect reached into his waist and turned toward the officer who fired one shot, fatally wounding him."
When asked if Madison had a gun, Gaston said, "I didn't see any on him."
No gun was found on Madison's body.
An autopsy obtained previously by CNN and verified by the Orleans Parish Coroner said Madison suffered five gunshot wounds to his back and two in his shoulder. (Watch police describe a running 'gunbattle')
'What I saw with my own eyes'
Gaston said he came forward now because he is still troubled by what happened. He said he decided to break his silence after watching a "CNN Presents" documentary, "Shoot to Kill," about the days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005.
CNN has visited the room where Gaston was staying. From that balcony, it is about 100 feet to where Madison was shot and killed.
The police department has said the shooting has been thoroughly investigated. But Gaston said no officer or detective approached him about what he saw. He was not asked for his name or phone number, Gaston said.
Gaston said his only contact with police on that day was when officers told him not to touch Madison's body, which was lying behind Gaston's truck, parked in the motel entranceway.
CNN has obtained a newspaper photo taken that Sunday morning that shows where the body fell. The back of a truck with a rusted trailer hitch and broken tail light can be seen in the photo. The photo appears to be Gaston's truck, which now sits in a parking lot in Dallas, Texas, where he now lives.
"They notified me that I had two bullet holes in the passenger side," he said. Two bullet marks can be seen at the right rear of the truck today.
Mary Howell, an attorney suing New Orleans police on behalf of the dead man's family, says there were several potential witnesses living at the Friendly Inn at the time of the shooting. She has accused police of violating procedures by failing to even write down their names.
Howell said Ronald Madison and his older brother, Lance Madison, were trying to avoid the shootout between police and others that day when they ran up the Danziger Bridge, toward the other side of the Industrial Canal.
Lance Madison has said a policeman pointed what looked like a rifle or shotgun at his brother and shot Ronald near the top of the bridge. Lance said he helped carry his wounded brother to the entrance of the motel and left him there while he ran for help. After being arrested, Lance was brought back to the motel where, he says, he first saw his brother was dead.
Howell said police, in the chaos after Hurricane Katrina, failed to properly investigate the fatal shooting and are now trying to put everything behind them.
"There's a lot of things that have been washed away with this hurricane," Howell said. "We are doing everything we can to make sure this is not one of them."
While the family of Ronald Madison presses on with its lawsuit, a grand jury in New Orleans is investigating the case. Gaston said he is willing to testify before the grand jury if it will help get to the truth.
"I'm not trying to say nobody did this and nobody did that," Gaston said. "I'm just saying what I saw and being truthful and honest about what I saw with my own eyes."
Labels: gun confiscations, gun grabs, Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, videos
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
NEW ORLEANS — Four current and two former New Orleans police officers have been charged in connection with the killing of unarmed civilians on the Danziger Bridge in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, federal law enforcement officials announced here on Tuesday.
Related
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5 Officers Indicted in Katrina Killing (June 12, 2010)
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New Orleans Police Face Swarm of Inquiries (October 9, 2009)
Photographs by Associated Press
Among those charged on Tuesday in New Orleans were, from left, former Officer Robert Faulcon, Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Sgt. Robert Gisevius and Officer Anthony Villavaso.
In addition, Mr. Faulcon, who was arrested Tuesday morning by F.B.I. agents in Fresno, Tex., was charged with shooting Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man with severe mental disabilities, in the back, killing him, as he tried to flee.
All four of the men could face the death penalty.
The Danziger case is the most high-profile of at least eight incidents involving New Orleans police officers that are being actively investigated by federal law enforcement officials. The case became a flash point, in the city and throughout the nation, a symbol of the violence, disorder and official ineptitude in the storm’s wake.
In particular, it shined a spotlight on New Orleans’s long-troubled Police Department, the target of a major corruption investigation in the 1990s. Two former officers are sitting on death row.
In May, at the formal invitation of the city’s newly inaugurated mayor, Mitch Landrieu, Justice Department officials announced they were conducting a full review of the Police Department, a process that often ends in a consent decree, a legally binding agreement for systemic reform.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who spoke at a news conference here on Tuesday, put the indictment in that context.
“It will take more than this investigation to renew the New Orleans Police Department and to allow it to thrive,” Mr. Holder said, adding later, “We want to look at this in a holistic way.”
The four men who were charged with killing Mr. Brissette are in custody, federal officials said, who added that the investigation was continuing. The three officers have been suspended without pay, a police spokesman said.
Two other men charged on Tuesday — one an officer and the other a recent retiree — received summonses, said a spokeswoman for the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
“We’ve known it was coming for at least six months and suspected it was coming for a year,” said Frank DeSalvo, a lawyer for Sergeant Bowen. “It’s not a shock. We’re ready.”
Eric Hessler, a lawyer who represents Sergeant Gisevius, said federal officials should have considered the chaos that the police were operating in during the first few days after Hurricane Katrina.
“The federal government has clearly forgotten or chosen to ignore the circumstances police officers were working under and clearly chose not to factor in any of those circumstances when they decided to charge them with an intentional act of murder,” Mr. Hessler said in an interview.
Lawyers for the other men who were indicted could not be reached or did not return calls seeking comment.
Starting in February, police officers, often one at a time, began to plead guilty to lesser charges like conspiring to obstruct justice in the Danziger case; five former officers and a civilian have done so to date.
The 27-count indictment handed up by a grand jury on Monday paints a harrowing picture of the events on the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, when much of the city was still underwater.
The details of the shootings on the bridge that began to emerge, and which were elaborated on in the indictment unsealed Tuesday, were ghastlier than many in the city had expected.
Responding to a call that the police were under fire, officers drove to the bridge over the Industrial Canal in eastern New Orleans in a Budget rental truck. Some were armed with assault rifles, others with a shotgun or a semiautomatic pistol.
Mr. Brissette and five members of the Bartholomew family were walking across the bridge to get food and other supplies from a supermarket, the indictment reads, when the officers opened fire. Four members of the Bartholomew family were shot. Susan Bartholomew, at the time 38, lost part of her arm; her husband, Leonard Bartholomew III, was shot in the head. Mr. Brissette, who was killed, was shot seven times.
Some officers then traveled to the other side of the bridge and found two brothers, Ronald and Lance Madison, who were on their way to check on a dentist’s office that belonged to their oldest brother, Dr. Romell Madison. According to the indictment, Mr. Faulcon then shot Ronald Madison to death with a shotgun. Afterward, it continues, Sergeant Bowen kicked and stomped on Mr. Madison as he lay dying on the ground...
[Full Article]Labels: charges, Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, Louisiana, murder, New Orleans
Monday, May 17, 2010
OATH KEEPERS EXCLUSIVE
We know that wholesale gun confiscation happened during Hurricane Katrina. We watched the Chief of Police of New Orleans declare on national television that “no one [no private citizen] will be able to be armed, we’re going to take all the weapons.” We watched an old lady being tackled in her own kitchen and disarmed.
In fact, that atrocious event was one of the reasons I started Oath Keepers. But I also knew, from my service as an Army paratrooper, that there are men and women of courage, honor, and integrity in the military who would refuse to obey such orders. My goal with Oath Keepers is simply to increase their numbers and harden their resolve. But when it came to Katrina, we did not have concrete proof that some said no – until now.
A Stand-Up Example from Katrina Emerges
This past week, on Friday May 14, 2010, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing Staff Sergeant (SSG) Joshua L. May of the Utah National Guard who told me how he, along with the other men in his military intelligence unit, refused to participate in any gun confiscation while deployed to assist during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
I finally discovered SSG May and his story only because after a speech I gave in Logan Utah on May 13, 2010, a local resident, Farley Anderson, walked up and told me about what SSG May had done. Upon hearing of it, I knew I just had to talk to him, so I had Mr. Anderson track down SSG May’s number and I called him at 11pm and invited him to breakfast the next morning. Until that night, SSG May hadn’t even heard of Oath Keepers (which is ironic since he is a shining example of an oath keeper). We met for the first time that next morning, Friday, May 14, 2010. During breakfast, SSG May told me his story, and then I asked him if we could go outside and do a video interview in the restaurant parking lot. He agreed that his story needed to be told and the below video is the result.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HRZfvtYlCY
[Full Article]
Labels: gun confiscations, Hurricane Katrina, Oath Keepers
Thursday, April 8, 2010
New Orleans Police Admit To Shooting Unarmed Civilians During 'Hurricane Katrina' Aftermath
A New Orleans police officer who fired his gun at civilians on the Danziger Bridge a week after Hurricane Katrina pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday, offering a chilling account of what transpired on the bridge that early September day in 2005.
Michael Hunter, 33, became the first officer who actually participated in the shooting to enter a guilty plea. Two investigators have already confessed to playing roles in a wide-ranging cover-up of the police shooting, which injured four unarmed civilians and left two men dead.
Hunter, who resigned last week after he was charged in federal court, contends that fellow officers shot at people they should have seen were unarmed. The account of events Hunter signed Thursday afternoon, called a factual basis, provides the most specific details to date about officers' actions on the bridge, which spans the Industrial Canal at Chef Menteur Highway...
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Police Shot Unarmed Civilians After Katrina, Officer Testifies
Federal prosecutors have accused New Orleans police of shooting unarmed civilians on the city's Danzinger Bridge days after Hurricane Katrina -- and then trying to cover up the incident. One officer has already entered a guilty plea, and yesterday, he spelled out what he said happened. From the Times-Picayune:
Hunter, 33, said a New Orleans police sergeant fired an assault rifle at wounded civilians at close range after other officers stopped shooting and after it was clear that the police were not taking fire. He also says he saw another officer in a car fire a shotgun at a fleeing man's back, although the man did nothing suggesting he was a threat to police.
That man, the Times-Picayune says, was severely mentally disabled, and he died as a result of the shooting, one of two who were killed. Four others were wounded. The attorneys for the accused police say they didn't do anything wrong and, if anything, feel more confident about their case after this latest development -- though they're not saying why...
Labels: Hurricane Katrina, Katrina, New Orleans
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