Katrina bridge shootings: five New Orleans police officers convicted

Bridge shootings: Officer fretted over "weak link"
MICHAEL KUNZELMAN, Associated Press
July 18, 2011

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Months before Sgt. Robert Gisevius was charged with plotting to cover up the shootings of unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina, he met a former colleague at a bar and shared his suspicion that someone was leaking information to federal investigators.

Gisevius didn't know that his companion that night, former police detective Jeffrey Lehrmann, was cooperating with the FBI and secretly taping their profanity-laden conversation in November 2009.

"What weak link could sink the ship?" Gisevius asks Lehrmann on the tape, which jurors heard Monday during the federal trial of Gisevius and four other current or former officers. The five defendants are charged in the shootings that killed two people and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge in September 2005.

In response, Lehrmann mentioned the name of an officer who fired his gun on the bridge but wasn't accused of killing anybody. Gisevius rejected that suggestion, saying the officer's lawyer was still "in all our meetings."

"I don't think he would sink the whole crew," added Gisevius, who later speculates that "somebody in homicide" was the leak.

Police are accused of shooting unarmed, wounded residents on the bridge as they responded to an officer's distress call. Lehrmann and four other New Orleans former officers have pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up that included a plot to plant a gun, fabricate witnesses and falsify reports to make the shootings appear justified...



August 08, 2011
Five Cops Guilty in Katrina Shootings
By SABRINA CANFIELD
Courthouse News

NEW ORLEANS (CN) - A jury on Friday found five New Orleans police officers guilty in the post-Katrina shooting deaths of two unarmed men and the wounding of four others as they tried to cross the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. The officers were found not guilty of murder.
The verdicts were the second group of cop convictions stemming from post-Katrina shootings. The Danziger Bridge shooting was widely publicized because of the police cover-up - including planting of a gun - after the shootings - a cover-up that lasted for years.
"We have a lot of work left to do but we are moving in the right direction," U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said after the verdict.
The jury found four officers - Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso, Officer Robert Faulcon and Sgt. Robert Gisevius - all guilty of violating the civil rights of James Brisette. Their actions caused his death, but it was not murder.
The jury found Officer Robert Faulcon guilty of the shooting death of Robert Madison. But again, the jury found that the death did not constitute murder.
The fifth officer convicted was retired Sgt. Arthur "Archie" Kaufman, who was not involved in the shootings but who led the police investigation of them. The jury found Kaufman guilty of every cover-up allegation, from wrongfully accusing innocent civilians of shooting at police to inventing witnesses to planting a gun and fabricating a story about the gun.
The four officers were charged with opening fire on two families on Sept. 4, 2005, as the families fled flooded New Orleans.
One man was killed from each family group. James Brisette, 17, was killed, and four members of the Bartholomew family were wounded.
In the other group, officers shot in the back Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, killing him.
According to the indictment, the officers drove onto the east side of the bridge in a Budget rental truck after receiving a call that officers nearby had been shot at. As the officers drove onto the bridge, they opened fire on the Bartholomew family, killing 17-year-old James Brissette, a family friend, and wounding Susan Bartholomew, Leonard Bartholomew III, 17-year-old Lesha Bartholomew and 19-year-old Jose Holmes.
Then the officers drove to the east side of the bridge, where two adult brothers were crossing on foot. "An officer shot Ronald Madison in the back as Madison ran away," according to the indictment.
The indictment added that Officer Bowen, "while acting under color of law, kicked and stomped Madison while Madison was on the ground, alive but mortally wounded."
The officers then arrested Ronald Madison's brother, 49-year-old Lance Madison, and held him for three weeks on charges of attempted murder.
The grand jury indictment, unsealed in July 2010, alleged the officers had "specifically discussed using Hurricane Katrina to excuse failures in the investigation, and thereby to help make any inquiry into the shooting[s] go away."
The indictment came after a 2-year federal investigation of the New Orleans Police Department's actions after the 2005 hurricane.
Other instances of unarmed civilian deaths at the hands of police officers also have resulted in guilty verdicts, including the Sept. 2, 2005 shooting of a man in the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers; his charred body was later found in his burned car.
Former New Orleans police Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty in February 2009 to his part in the cover-up: allowing a gun to be planted at the scene and writing a series of false reports.
Without giving names, Lohman testified that he had encouraged officers to come up with a story to justify the shootings.
Lohman's confession to conspiracy and cover-up resulted in a flurry of speculation about the officers who worked closely with him.
According to the indictment, the two unnamed officers Lohman mentioned were Bowen and Gisevius.
The indictment said the officers did not collect evidence from the scene for more than a month, and that immediately after the shooting, Arthur Kaufman became the lead investigator responsible for investigation of the shootings.
Between September 2005 and May 2006 Kaufman prepared numerous reports on the shootings. The indictment stated that on Sept. 4, "and again on numerous occasions between then and January 2006, the officers involved in the Danziger Bridge shooting, led by defendants Kaufman, Bowen, and Gisevius, discussed and modified the stories they would tell about what happened on the bridge."...

Trial: Bullets at Katrina shooting match police weapons

In testimony last week, officer Michael Hunter, who has pleaded guilty to a role in the shooting, said Bowen at one point leaned over the concrete barrier and held his gun low while spraying five civilians with bullets.

Trial: Bullets at Katrina shooting match police weapons
By Kathy Finn
Jul 13, 2011
(Reuters)

Bullets taken from victims of a fatal police shooting during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and from the scene match guns used by three of the police officers involved, a ballistics expert said on Wednesday.

Patrick Lane told a New Orleans jury that his analysis showed with "reasonable scientific certainty" that at least one of the bullets removed from the body of 17-year-old James Brissette matched the rifle fired by Sergeant Kenneth Bowen.

Other bullets or shell casings taken from the scene matched guns fired by officers Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso, the Louisiana State Police ballistics specialist said.

Bowen, Faulcon and Villavaso are on trial in federal court alongside Sergeant Robert Gisevius over the fatal shootings of Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison days after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. Four other people were seriously wounded in the incident.

A fifth officer, Sergeant Arthur Kaufman, is charged with covering up the crimes through false reports, a planted gun and made-up witnesses.

The civilians had been walking on the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans as a dozen officers responded to an alert that police were under fire in that area. When the police arrived, they began firing without warning, witnesses said.

One group of civilians took cover in a walkway behind a concrete barrier while others ran to the opposite end of the bridge.

A number of witnesses have said that police, including homicide investigator Kaufman, collected no evidence from the scene. Many, including police officers, have also testified that none of the civilians had weapons.

Lane testified that shell casings found later at the bridge matched two AK-47 rifles, a Glock .40-caliber handgun and a shotgun used by officers that day.

In later testimony, the pathologist who performed an autopsy on Brissette said several bullets had entered and exited his body, then reentered at another point. Dr. Dana Troxclair said some wounds could have come from bullets ricocheting off a hard surface, such as concrete.

She said that given the angle of the bullets, the gun would have had to be low to the ground when fired.

In testimony last week, officer Michael Hunter, who has pleaded guilty to a role in the shooting, said Bowen at one point leaned over the concrete barrier and held his gun low while spraying five civilians with bullets.