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Shots on the Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina
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Shots on the Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina
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Overview
On September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans, two groups of people intersected on the Danziger Bridge, a low-rising expanse over the Industrial Canal. One was the police who had stayed behind as Katrina roared near, desperate to maintain control as their city spun into chaos. The other was the residents forced to stay behind with them during the storm and, on that fateful Sunday, searching for the basics of survival: food, medicine, security. They collided that morning in a frenzy of gunfire.
When the shooting stopped, a gentle forty-year-old man with the mind of a child lay slumped on the ground, seven bullet wounds in his back, his white shirt turned red. A seventeen-year-old was riddled with gunfire from his heel to his head. A mother’s arm was blown off; her daughter’s stomach gouged by a bullet. Her husband’s head was pierced by shrapnel. Her nephew was shot in the neck, jaw, stomach, and hand. Like all the other victims, he was black—and unarmed.
Before the blood had dried on the pavement, the shooters, each a member of the New Orleans Police Department, and their supervisors hatched a cover-up. They planted a gun, invented witnesses, and charged two of their victims with attempted murder. At the NOPD, they were hailed as heroes.
Shots on the Bridge explores one of the most dramatic cases of police violence seen in our country in the last decade—the massacre of innocent people, carried out by members of the NOPD, in the brutal, disorderly days following Hurricane Katrina. It reveals the fear that gripped the police of a city slid into anarchy, the circumstances that drove desperate survivors to the bridge, and the horror that erupted when the police opened fire. It carefully unearths the cover-up that nearly buried the truth. And finally, it traces the legal maze that, a decade later, leaves the victims and their loved ones still searching for justice.
This is the story of how the people meant to protect and serve citizens can do violence, hide their tracks, and work the legal system as the nation awaits justice.
Named one of the top books of 2015 by NewsOne Now, and named one of the best books of August 2015 by Apple
Winner of the 2015 Investigative Reporters and Editors Book Award
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780807033517 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Beacon Press |
Publication date: | 08/18/2015 |
Sold by: | Penguin Random House Publisher Services |
Format: | eBook |
Pages: | 256 |
File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Steering with his right hand, the ex-marine leans out the window and fires a handgun with his left toward a pack of people he glimpses ahead, gathered at the foot of the bridge. The truck screeches to a halt, sending some in back tumbling over, and officers pour out. They say nothing. One, Anthony Villavaso II, rips nine shots from his AK-47. Pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Officer Faulcon hits the ground, pumps his shotgun, then fires. He pumps again, then fires. . . . One officer aims his pistol at the back of a slight figure sprinting away from the bridge, and pulls the trigger twice. Another points his rifle toward two men trying to race up and over the bridge for cover, and fires. . . . When the shooting stops, seventeen-year-old James Brissette Jr. is dead, bullets riddling his six-foot, 130-pound body from the heel of his foot to the top of his head. Susan Bartholomew is trying to crawl on the pavement, her right arm dangling by a thread. Her daughter’s stomach is shredded by a bullet. Her husband’s head is pierced by shrapnel. Her nephew Jose is shot in the neck, jaw, stomach, elbow, and hand. A paramedic arriving soon after says not to bother with him; the teen is too far gone. . . . Ronald Madison is slumped over the pavement, the back of his white shirt turned red, with seven gunshot wounds in his back. As Madison wheezes his final breaths, . . . Hunter watches his former supervisor Bowen . . . stomp on his back, leaving a boot print upon the slight figure sprawled in pools of blood.
Like every one of the victims, he is black, and unarmed.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE: On the BridgePART I: THE KILLINGS
CHAPTER 1: A Family's Bond, a Threatening Storm
CHAPTER 2: A Mother's Last Chance
CHAPTER 3: Eleven People, One Van, a Second-Floor Apartment
CHAPTER 4: An Officer, A Baby Due, A Choice
CHAPTER 5: A City Under Water: Survivors Cling to Life, Police Lose Their Grip
CHAPTER 6: 108: Officer in Distress, a Race to the Bridge
CHAPTER 7: The Shots on the Bridge: Lives Intersect—Two Dead, Four Maimed, Endless Barrage of Gunfire
CHAPTER 8: Triage
CHAPTER 9: NOPD Triage: The After Action Reports
PART II: MAKING IT ALL GO AWAY
CHAPTER 10: The Cover-Up
CHAPTER 11: Shock, Funerals, Police Visits—and a Family’s Quest for Answers
CHAPTER 12: Victims Shine a Legal Light
CHAPTER 13: The District Attorney Brings Charges—and the Police Brotherhood Fights Back
CHAPTER 14: From Narcotics Cop to Police Attorney: An Insider’s View
CHAPTER 15: Judicial Ties, Prosecutorial Error, and the NOPD Walks Free
PART III: THE TRIALS
CHAPTER 16: Conspiracy Cracks Under Federal Glare
CHAPTER 17: USA v. Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso, Kaufman and Dugue
CHAPTER 18: Judgment Time, Judicial Questions—and an Officer’s Shame
CHAPTER 19: In the Courtroom
PART IV: JUSTICE HELD UP
CHAPTER 20: The Online Commentators
CHAPTER 21: From Prep School to Politics to Danziger: A Judge’s Prayerful Path
CHAPTER 22: Judgment Day: A Mother and Brother Confront the Convicted
CHAPTER 23: The Consent Decree: A History of Police Abuse, Documented
CHAPTER 24: “The Interest of Justice”: The Reversal
EPILOGUE: As a National Civil Rights Movement Stirs, Justice Is on Hold in New Orleans
Acknowledgments
About the Research
Index