Dysfunctional Justice System Delivers some Justice

Hurricane Gustav rolls in

On August 30, 2008 I was sitting in a bar in the ninth ward of New Orleans waiting for Hurricane Gustav.  It was unbelievably hot in my house. For some reason, Entergy couldn’t keep my electricity on but across the street at BJ’s bar, there was cool air and sweet relief.  I was working on a paper and drinking beer off and on all day.  I was back and forth depending on how much I could charge the laptop battery and cool myself down.

Later in the evening, a group of policemen entered the bar including one local guy that had a reputation for a mean temper when drunk and using the n word profusely. He had a group of rookies tagging along with him.  We felt fairly safe back then because the National Guard was almost always first on crime scenes at that point in time and it kept the NOPD in check when they were watched by something other than citizens.  Middle aged, white but with that ruddy red hue in the face indicating too much alcohol in the system, this guy has a substantial beer gut and one hell of a chip on his shoulder.  He’s a case study in anger.  He was always looking to prove something.

This officer later waved his badge from a lawn chair planted in the street to a patrolling National Guard Unit. Move on, move on! Nothing to see here!  Believe me, the guy has a reputation around the neighborhood and I found out why shortly after as he rolled a local prostitutes for freebie blow jobs on the back of a black and white for all the rookies.  She was a middle-aged, nice looking dirty blonde with a drug habit. I’d talked to her on many occasions. She mostly services the lonely old losers in the neighborhood.  I had heard she was forced to service the officer, but had never seen evidence of it until that night.   I left in disgust before the show really got on the road.  This is the guy that later let a drug felon beat me up because I had the audacity to tell the felon that his girlfriend had been sleeping with the cop both before and after he was in the federal penitentiary. You remember, that’s the cop that had me arrested for fighting. Little old me with a broken rib in my back from being kicked while under a table. Yup, ask me.  I believe that a good portion of the NOPD only exists to protect and serve its own.

It’s no secret that I don’t believe a word that any NOPD officer says given my experience with them two years ago. I said as much to a judge, two prosecutors and a public defender when I was called to jury duty 18 months ago.  The Danziger Bridge shootings have nationally exposed the underbelly of the NOPD with its blue line fraternity boys culture often caught up in corruption.  Will this actually lead to any change?  I don’t know.  I’m just glad a few people got a sense of justice, even though it’s hard bought with the deaths of two innocent people including one man that was mentally disabled.

A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

All five officers were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. The four who had been charged with civil rights violations in the shootings were convicted on all counts.

However, the jury didn’t find that Brisette or Faulcon’s shootings amounted to murder.

Prosecutors contended during the five-week federal trial that officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning, killing two and wounding four others on Sept. 4, 2005, then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.

Defense attorneys countered that the officers were returning fire and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to another officer’s distress call less than a week after Katrina struck.

Again, the family of the shooting victims may never find peace despite the overwhelming verdict of guilty on most counts for the five officers. Ronald Madison was the 40 year old victim with diminished mental capacity that was shot in the back and unarmed.

The family of victim Ronald Madison greeted the verdict with solemn appreciation, thanking law enforcement and the media for keeping the story in the limelight.

“We will never be completely healed, because we will never have Ronald Madison back,” said Madison’s brother Lance, who was with him on the bridge and who was initially arrested after the shooting.

“They took the twinkle out of my eye and the song out of my heart,” said a visibly shaken Sherell Johnson, the mother of James Brissette, the young man shot and killed in a hail of gunfire on the bridge.

The verdicts begin to close one of the darkest sagas that came to light in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The five current and former New Orleans police officers were accused of wrongfully shooting six unarmed civilians, two fatally, on the Danziger Bridge several days after the storm blew through New Orleans and then staging an elaborate cover-up to justify the shootings.

In a 25-count indictment, the men in question – Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso and Kaufman – were accused of turning on those citizens they had sworn to protect, especially in their most vulnerable hour when the city’s levees ruptured, flooding and crippling a majority of New Orleans as it descended into chaos. They faced a slew of charges, ranging from civil rights violations to murder charges to using a firearm in the commission of a crime to misleading investigators.

Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso were accused of shooting the unarmed men and women, while Kaufman was accused of masterminding the cover-up, including the planting of a gun on the bridge and writing a bogus police report that would include phony witnesses.

The NOPD has never had a stellar record as an efficient police department.  I’ve spent my 16 years here reading about bad cop after bad cop.  It’s obviously a systemic problem.  I’ll never forget the look on those rookies faces on their initiation night. I’ll never forget the way that a badge can wave off people that may actually be there to help.  I’ve seen that happen twice now.  I’ll never forget the carnival scene that also happened when a friend of mine was killed when a woman driving her boyfriend’s wife’s truck slammed him into a cast iron gate. He’s never gotten his justice to this date. The cops spent most of the time standing around with ice cream cones in their hands. They had blocked off all traffic but let the ice cream truck through to park and do business.  Children on bikes were allowed to buzz my friend’s lifeless body.  That’s another story too and there’s more.  I’ve only been here 16 years and I’ve got plenty of them.  Just imagine what a NOLA lifer can come up with. There’s a lot to love about this city.  Best food, music, and people in the world. The NOPD is not one of the reasons.