http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/six-new-orleans-police-ch_b_647771.html
Danziger Bridge is Just the Beginning
Six New Orleans Police Charged in Post-Katrina Killings, But Activists Say
Deeper Change is Needed
By Jordan Flaherty
HuffingtonPost: July 15, 2010
This week, federal officials charged six current and former New Orleans
police officers in connection with the killing of civilians in the days
after Hurricane Katrina. The six are not only accused of murder but also of
conspiring to hide their crime through secret meetings, planting evidence,
inventing witnesses, false arrests, and perjury. Four of the officers may
face the death penalty.
While the details of their charges are shocking, much of the media has
missed the real story: corruption and violence are endemic to the NOPD, and
wider systemic change is needed not just in police personnel, but in the
city's overall criminal justice system.
Days of Violence
In the days after the flooding of New Orleans, police officers were told
they were defending a city under siege and were given tacit permission to
use deadly force at their own discretion. At the time, no one in power
seemed to be interested in looking into the details of who was killed and
why.
For more than three years, these post-Katrina murders were ignored by the
city's District Attorney, the Republican U.S. Attorney, and even the local
media. But in late 2008 ProPublica and The Nation published the results of
an 18-month investigation by journalist A.C. Thompson. Under new leadership,
the Department of Justice began its own inquiries soon after Thompson's
report.
FBI agents reconstructed crime scenes, interviewed witnesses and seized
officers' computers. Disturbing revelations have continued to unfold since
then, as the mounting evidence against them has forced a growing number of
cops to confess.
Among the most shocking cases:
On September 2, four days after Katrina made landfall, Henry Glover was shot
by one officer, then apparently taken hostage by other officers who either
killed him directly or burned him alive. His charred remains were found
weeks later.
Also on September 2, Danny Brumfield Sr., a 45 year old man stranded with
his family at the New Orleans Convention Center, was deliberately hit by a
patrol car, then shot in the back by police in front of scores of witnesses
as he tried to wave down the officers to ask for help.
On September 4, 2005, on New Orleans' Danziger Bridge, a group of police
officers drove up to several unarmed civilians who were fleeing their
flooded homes and opened fire. Two people were killed, including a mentally
challenged man named Ronald Madison, and four were seriously injured.
Madison was shot in the back by officer Robert Faulcon, and officer Kenneth
Bowen then rushed up and kicked and stomped on him, apparently until he was
dead.
Faulcon and Bowen were among those charged this week in a 27-count
indictment that lays out the disturbing chain of events on the bridge.
The post-Katrina killings have also led investigators into further
inquiries. The feds have already announced that they are looking into at
least eight cases, including incidents that occurred in the summer before
Katrina and in the years after. And as high-ranking officers confess to
manufacturing evidence, their confessions bring doubt to scores of other
cases they have worked on.
Endemic Violence
A coalition of criminal justice activists called Community United for Change
(CUC) has asked for federal investigations of dozens of other police murders
committed over the past three decades, which advocates say have never been
properly examined. Activists named a wide range of cases, from the death of
25-year-old Jenard Thomas, who was shot by police in front of his father on
March 24, 2005; to Sherry Singleton, shot by police in 1980 while she was
naked in a bathtub, in front of her four year old child.
Several parents and other family members of victims of police violence have
joined in protests and community forums sponsored by CUC. The parents of
Adolph Grimes III, who was shot 14 times by cops on New Year's day in 2009,
are among those who have spoken out. "We want those officers incarcerated,
so they can live with it like we live with it," said Grimes' father.
"This represents a real opportunity to raise some fundamental questions
about the nature of police and what they do," said Malcolm Suber, project
director with the New Orleans chapter of the American Friends Service
Committee and one of the organizers who formed Community United for Change.
Civil rights attorney Tracie Washington has been among those leading the
call for federal intervention in the department. "It is time for the U.S.
government, through the Justice Department's Office of Civil Rights, to step
in and step up," she said. "We need a solution that addresses the systemic
nature of the problem."
Justice Department officials have indicated that they agree on the need for
federal assistance. "Criminal prosecutions alone, I have learned, are not
enough to change the culture of a police department," said Assistant
Attorney General Thomas Perez.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu has also said he agrees on the need for federal
supervision. In a letter to Attorney General Holder, Landrieu wrote, "It is
clear that nothing short of a complete transformation is necessary and
essential to ensure safety for the citizens of New Orleans."
However, many activists fear that Mayor Landrieu is speaking out in support
of reform so he can maintain a level of control over the changes dictated by
the feds. They are critical of Landrieu's choices so far, such as his
selection of NOPD veteran Ronal Serpas for the job of police chief, and have
expressed concern that he will not break with the department's troubled
history. "This is lukewarm reform," says Rosana Cruz, the associate director
of V.O.T.E., an organization that seeks to build power and civic engagement
for formerly incarcerated people. "This is reaching the lowest possible bar
that we could possibly set."
Beyond Bad Apples
While some form of federal supervision of the department seems likely,
Malcolm Suber doesn't think federal oversight is enough.
"I don't think that we can call on a government that murders people all over
the world every day to come and supervise a local police department," He
says. For Suber, federal control will not offer the wider, more systemic
changes needed in other aspects of the system. While Suber wants more
federal investigations of police murders, he wants these investigations to
go hand in hand with community oversight and control of the department.
While activists may disagree on the role they see for the federal
government, one thing Washington, Suber and Cruz agree on is that the
problem runs deeper than police department corruption. They say any solution
needs to reach beyond the department to other facets of the system like the
city's elected coroner, the District Attorney's office, the U.S. Attorney
and the city's Independent Police Monitor, who many see as limited by not
having the ability to perform its own investigations.
"We have a coroner who always finds police were justified," said Suber,
referring to Frank Minyard, an 80-year-old jazz trumpeter who is trained as
a gynecologist. Minyard has been city coroner since 1974, and has been the
frequent subject of complaints from activists, who contend that he has
mislabeled police killings. "We've had independent coroners, forensic
doctors come after him," said Suber, "And we found that basically all of his
finding were bogus. Just made up."
Henry Glover, last seen in the custody of police then found burned to death
in a car, was not flagged by the coroner's office as a potential homicide.
In another case now under federal investigation, witnesses say police beat
Raymond Robair to death. The coroner ruled that he "fell down or was
pushed." This "fall" broke four ribs and caused massive internal injury,
including a ruptured spleen.
"If you ask any attorneys who have handled cases of police killings,"
continued Suber, "When they have hired independent doctors to go after our
coroner, nine times out of ten he's wrong."
Activists also complain that the city's District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro
has been slow to pursue cases of police violence. "The district attorney
just does not file charges," Suber said. "When it's involving police, he
finds no crimes committed." Republican US Attorney Jim Letten has also
failed, Suber added. "A number of community groups have gone and met with
him, asked him to investigate and he didn't do anything."
Organizers have put forward a range of proposals for the reforms they would
like to see, including institutional support for community-led programs like
CopWatch, the incorporation of a system for language interpretation, and a
more powerful Independent Police Monitor. But they all agree that not just
the department, but the entire system needs fundamental change, and that
change needs to come from outside of city government. "How you gonna get the
wolf to watch over the chicken coop?" asks Adolph Grimes, Jr. "It's the
system itself that is corrupted."
An earlier version of this article originally appeared on colorlines.com.
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a
staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to
bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his
award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of
outlets including the New York Times, Mother Jones, and Argentina's Clarin
newspaper. He has produced news segments for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and
Democracy Now! and appeared as a guest on CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360,
and Keep Hope Alive with the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Haymarket Books has
just released his new book, FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from
Katrina to the Jena Six. He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org.
More information about Floodlines can be found at floodlines.org.
Floodlines will also be featured on the Community and Resistance Tour this
fall. For more information on the tour, see
communityandresistance.wordpress.com.
-------------------------------------------------
Recent Reporting by Jordan Flaherty:
Fears of Cultural Extinction on Louisiana's Gulf Coast:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/fears-of-cultural-extinct_b_612626.html
Jena Sheriff Seeks Revenge for Civil Rights Protests:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/jena-sheriff-seeks-reveng_b_575413.html
New Complaints of Police Violence in New Orleans:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jordan-flaherty/new-complaints-of-police_b_544335.html
Her Crime? Sex Work in New Orleans:
http://www.colorlines.com/article.php?ID=673
Other Resources:
Louisiana Justice Institute: http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org
Justice Roars: http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com
Project Transparency: http://www.nolapublicrecords.org
Left Turn Magazine: http://www.leftturn.org
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