Who were the 'animals' after Hurricane Katrina?: Jarvis DeBerry
Published: Friday, July 16, 2010, 7:00 AM
On Sept. 26, 2005, The Times-Picayune published a report by Gordon Russell and former reporter Brian Thevenot that disputed the prevailing idea that New Orleanians at the Superdome and Convention Center after Hurricane Katrina preyed on one another with impunity.
Romell Madison, whose brother Ronald was killed by officers on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina, looks on as U.S. Attorney Jim Letten talks to reporters about a police officer's guilty plea.
The headline read "Rape. Murder. Gunfights. ... much of the violence NEVER HAPPENED," but in my mind, I always applied my own, more defiant headline: "We are not animals!"
Nobody was killed at the Louisiana Superdome. One person was killed at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. Even so, there was a story that circulated there about a 7-year-old whose throat was slit after she was raped. There was another story about 30 to 40 slain bodies in a Convention Center freezer. The soldiers who did clean-up duty in New Orleans recovered six bodies -- none of them homicides -- at the Superdome; they found four -- one of them a homicide -- at the Convention Center. They'd been made to expect a battlefield littered with bodies.
What did Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney think about all the atrocities that had been attributed to New Orleanians stuck in the city? Lachney, a National Guardsman who helped with security at the Superdome, told Russell and Thevenot, "I think 99 percent of it is bulls---."
Civilians may not have gone on murderous rampages after Hurricane Katrina, but federal prosecutors say some members of the New Orleans Police Department did. Officers stand accused of unleashing a bloodbath on the Danziger Bridge that killed two people and wounded four. Other officers stand accused of shooting a man, driving his body to an Algiers levee and setting that car on fire.
There are other allegations of New Orleans police violently attacking citizens. While driving past the Convention Center, police fired a shotgun and killed 45-year-old Danny Brumfield whose relatives said he was trying to flag the officers down. Despite all the rumors of civilians running amok at the Convention Center, could it be that the only person killed there was wrongly killed by the police?
Could it also be true that the police became unhinged because they were convinced -- to use the words of then Mayor Ray Nagin -- that people in New Orleans had devolved to an "almost animalistic state?"
Mayor Mitch Landrieu wrote U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder in May. In his request for help, the mayor said that he had inherited what "has been described by many as one of the worst police departments in the country."
The federal grand jury that indicted four current and two former New Orleans police officers this week must agree. The grand jury accuses Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Sgt. Robert Gisevius and Officer Anthony Villavaso of fatally attacking 17-year-old James Brissette on the Danziger Bridge. Former officer Robert Faulcon is accused of killing the teenager and Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man who had stayed during the storm to care for his dachshunds Bobbi and Sushi.
Madison and Brissette were walking across the bridge separately, authorities say, and both were unarmed and posed no threat to the officers who confronted them. Homicide investigator Sgt. Arthur Kaufman and former Sgt. Gerard Dugue are accused of conspiring with the above officers to cover up what the government says was the unprovoked killing of innocents on the bridge.
Jose Holmes, who was walking with Brissette, spent years wearing a colostomy bag after police shot him. His aunt, Susan Bartholomew, had part of her arm blown off. Her husband, Leonard Bartholomew, was shot in the head. The couple's daughter, Leisha, was wounded.
Five former police officers had already pleaded guilty in conspiring to cover up what happened on the bridge. Their testimony will be crucial if the government is to prove its case against the men indicted this week.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said that his office has pursued its investigations against the Police Department "so that no one ever has to fear those whose duty is to protect them."
Fearing the police would have made good sense after Katrina.
We are not animals. Even if some officers attacked us like we were.
Jarvis DeBerry is an editorial writer. He can be reached at jdeberry@timespicayune.com. Follow him at http://connect.nola.com/user/jdeberry/index.html and at twitter.com/jarvisdeberrytp.< a>em>
