{"id":5540,"date":"2011-08-06T00:23:26","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T07:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5540"},"modified":"2011-08-06T00:23:26","modified_gmt":"2011-08-06T07:23:26","slug":"delayed-katrina-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/08\/06\/delayed-katrina-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"Delayed Katrina Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

With all the hate going around, individual examples fade from memory, but let us revisit the time when Crawford Caligula was fiddling, New Orleans was drowning, and Brownie was doing a \u201check of a job.\u201d  If you remember, police murdered two unarmed black citizens on the Danziger Bridge.  Friday, the beginning of justice arrived, long overdue after almost six years.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"6DanzigerBridgeShooting\"A jury convicted New Orleans police officers of violating the civil rights of two people killed a week after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. A fifth was found guilty of a later cover-up, along with the other four. <\/p>\n

Jurors deliberated three days to convict the officers of all 25 counts they were accused of<\/strong>. They are to be sentenced Dec. 14 by U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt in New Orleans. The four who fired shots at the bridge are in custody. The fifth, a detective, is free on bail. <\/p>\n

The civil rights violations caused the deaths of James Brissette, 17, and Ronald Madison, 40, the jury found separately, meaning the maximum punishment for the four officers directly involved is life in prison<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The jury convicted officers Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso of opening fire on unarmed black icivilians on the city\u2019s Danziger Bridge and conspiring with others to cover up their actions. <\/p>\n

The fifth, homicide detective Arthur \u201cArchie\u201d Kaufman, was convicted of conspiring to make the shootings appear justified<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

The shootings took place on Sept. 4, 2005, one week after Katrina flooded most of New Orleans and one day after stranded evacuees were airlifted and bused to safety\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Bloomberg<\/a>><\/p>\n

We will not know whether justice is truly done, until these men are sentenced.  Because they were entrusted to uphold the law, to serve and protect, these men are more culpable than others might be, so light sentences would be most unjust.  I hope that they come to realize the magnitude of their crime, join the grief over what they have done, and change.<\/font><\/p>\n

I believe that the majority of police officers are professionals who do their jobs well.  However, there is an unfortunate tendency among even good police to form a \u201cthin blue line\u201d and cover up the crimes of their fellow officers.  Therefore, to protect citizens, all police actions should be subject to oversight by independent citizen review boards.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all the hate going around, individual examples fade from memory, but let us revisit the time when Crawford Caligula was fiddling, New Orleans was drowning, and Brownie was doing a \u201check of a job.\u201d  If you remember, police murdered two unarmed black citizens on the Danziger Bridge.  Friday, the beginning of justice arrived, long […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}