Police guilty of Katrina shootings

A US jury convicted five current and former police officers of gunning down people on a New Orleans bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

The verdicts marked a high-profile victory for the US Justice Department in its push to clean up the city’s troubled police force.

The case was a high-stakes test of the effort to rid the department of corruption and brutality. A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of government probes.

Most of the cases centre on actions during the aftermath of the August 29 2005 storm, which plunged the flooded city into a state of lawlessness and desperation.

Sgts Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and former officer Robert Faulcon were convicted of civil rights violations over the shootings that killed two people and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge less than a week after the storm. They face possible life prison sentences.

Retired Sgt Arthur “Archie” Kaufman and the other four men were also convicted of engaging in a brazen cover-up that included a planted gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports. The five men were convicted of all 25 counts they faced.

Shaun Clarke, a defence lawyer and former federal prosecutor who moved from New Orleans to Houston after Katrina, said the verdicts were “critically important” to the Justice Department’s reform efforts.

“It’s a huge verdict for the government,” he said. “Of all the cases concerning alleged misconduct by police officers after Katrina, this was the one that had the highest national profile.”

Faulcon was found guilty of fatally shooting Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, but the jury decided his killing did not amount to murder.

Faulcon, Gisevius, Bowen and Villavaso were convicted in the death of 17-year-old James Brissette. Jurors did not have to decide whether he was murdered because they did not hold any of the defendants individually responsible for causing his death.

Kaufman, who was assigned to investigate the deadly encounter on the bridge, was not charged with the shootings.

New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, who invited the Justice Department last year to conduct a thorough review of the police department, said the verdicts “provide significant closure to a dark chapter in our city’s history”.

In March, the Justice Department issued a blistering report that said New Orleans police officers have often used deadly force without justification, repeatedly made unconstitutional arrests and engaged in racial profiling. Mr Landrieu has said he expects the federal review to bring about court-ordered reforms.

Five former officers pleaded guilty to participating in covering up the bridge shootings and gave evidence during the trial. Another former officer, retired Sgt Gerard Dugue, has a separate trial due to start in September.

James Brissette’s mother, Sherrel Johnson, said she was relieved by the verdict after “a long, hard six years” and would now try to move on.

“For him there will be no prom, no baby, no nothing. My child will never have nothing,” she said.

Defence lawyer Roger Kitchens, who represented Villavaso, said he believed negative media coverage of the case tainted jurors.

“At this point, I don’t think it’s possible for a New Orleans police officer to get a fair trial in the city of New Orleans. And I don’t think they got one today,” he said.

Prosecutors said police had no justification for shooting unarmed, defenceless people trying to cross the bridge in search of food and help days after Katrina struck.

The defence argued that police were shot at on the bridge before they returned fire.

Faulcon, the only defendant to testify, said he was “paralysed with fear” when he shot dead Mr Madison as he chased him and his brother Lance. Faulcon did not dispute that he shot an unarmed man in the back, but said he had believed Ronald Madison was armed and posed a threat.

Prosecutors said Kaufman retrieved a gun from his home weeks after the shootings and turned it in as evidence, trying to pass it off as a gun belonging to Lance Madison. Police arrested Lance Madison on attempted murder charges, but a grand jury later cleared him.