Copping Out: The Consequences of Police Corruption and Misconduct by Stanford Anthony

Author:Stanford, Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
Published: 2015-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE INVESTIGATIONS

What is fairly certain is that reports of escalating systemic police brutality and misconduct throughout the country have resulted in a sharp increase in the number of investigations conducted by the Department of Justice (DOJ). Scores of criminal allegations against individual police officers and entire police departments are currently underway at the federal level. Furthermore, there appears to be absolutely no correlation to warmer weather.

There is, for example, the sensational 2005 case against five New Orleans police officers, Sergeants Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius and Arthur Kaufman, and officers Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon. In this instance, it seems that perilous weather conditions, racial bias, excessive force, conspiracy, improper prosecutorial interference, and politics culminated in a situation that, over several years, shook the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) to its core. The officers, facing sentences ranging from 120 years to life in prison, were charged in what is commonly referred to as the “Danziger Trial,” and it was immediately apparent that the case was tinged by elements that would affect the wider New Orleans community and potentially stain the reputation of the entire NOPD. However, at the time, it was difficult to fathom that innuendo, and other factors related to the case, would reach the highest levels of the federal government.

What is alleged to have happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, known to many as the “perfect storm,” is perceived as a flagrant example of excessive force, brutality, and a conspiracy against the people of New Orleans. According to the New Orleans Tribune, after NOPD officers killed two unarmed individuals and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge, Lieutenant Michael Lohman reportedly told other police officers that, “We can’t have this look like a massacre.”17

Some NOPD officers cooperated with the government with the hope of receiving lighter sentences. For his part, Lohman described a situation wherein a conspiracy to conceal what occurred in the wake of Hurricane Katrina began immediately following the shooting and continued for four years. According to original witness reports, NOPD officers came looking for trouble and initiated it when Officer Ignatius Hills, a black police officer, fired at an unarmed 14-year-old named Leonard Bartholomew. Another NOPD police officer reported Officer Hills to have said, “I just tried to pop that little (N-Word).”18

In late 2013, U.S. district judge Kurt Engelhardt ordered a new case for the convicted NOPD officers who were charged with federal civil rights violations. Judge Engelhardt citied DOJ activities associated with the investigation of the officers as being, “highly unusual, extensive and truly bizarre.”19 There is more to come related to the Danziger Bridge incident and other DOJ investigations.

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