(Reuters) – Four former New Orleans
policemen convicted of shooting unarmed people following Hurricane Katrina were sentenced to lengthy prison terms on
Wednesday in what the U.S. government described as the most important police misconduct case since the Rodney King beating
nearly two decades ago.
Jim Letten (C) speaks to the media after the sentencing of former New Orleans police officers who were convicted in deadly
shootings New Orleans April 4, 2012. Five former police officers convicted for their roles in a post-Hurricane Katrina
shootings that killed two unarmed civilians and wounded four others will be sentenced on Wednesday in federal court.
REUTERS/Sean Gardner
The four former officers – Kenneth Bowen, Robert
Faulcon, Robert Gisevius and Anthony Villavaso – were sentenced by a federal judge to between 38 and 65 years in prison. A
fifth former officer – Arthur “Archie” Kaufman – who did not participate in the killings but engineered a four-year cover-up
of the crimes was sentenced to six years.
The New Orleans police case was the “most significant police misconduct
prosecution since Rodney King,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Thomas Perez said, referring to
the beating of a black motorist by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 that was caught on videotape.
In both the Los
Angeles and New Orleans cases, the federal government stepped in to prosecute the police officers for misconduct after local
efforts failed.
The five former New Orleans officers sentenced on Wednesday were among a dozen officers who responded
to a radio call that police were being shot at near the Danziger Bridge in eastern New Orleans just days after Hurricane
Katrina.
The officers packed into a rental truck and sped to the site. Witnesses testified that when the officers
arrived, they jumped out of the truck and repeatedly fired assault rifles, shotguns and handguns at civilians walking on the
bridge.
James Brissette, 17, and Ronald Madison, 40, were killed in the shooting spree.
In reports filed by the
officers or on their behalf, they claimed they shot only after being threatened or fired on and that they had seen weapons in
the victims’ hands.
Kaufman was later convicted of planting a handgun at the scene.
Lance Madison, who was
with his brother when Ronald Madison was killed, and who was later arrested and jailed on false charges, told the judge on
Wednesday that “I truly don’t know why I am alive today.”
“These officers shot Ronald down like an animal,” he said.
Turning to the defendants, he said: “You are responsible for the nightmares that have devastated my family.”
The
sentencing of the five men in New Orleans federal court completed one of the last cases of police misconduct more than six
years after the devastating hurricane flooded the city and triggered a chaotic aftermath.
Some 1,500 people died and
tens of thousands were left homeless. In the days immediately after the hurricane an atmosphere of lawlessness prevailed and
National Guard troops were brought in to bolster the overwhelmed New Orleans police.
Advertisement
Last August, a jury found Bowen, Faulcon, Gisevius and Villavaso guilty on multiple charges
including federal civil rights violations stemming from the September 4, 2005, incident.
Bowen and Gisevius were
sentenced to 40 years each and Villavaso to 38 years by U.S. District Court Judge Kurt Engelhardt. Faulcon was sentenced to
65 years.
Homicide detective Kaufman was convicted of covering up the crimes through a series of false reports and
lies that continued for more than four years.
Another police detective charged with participating in the cover-up is
slated for trial in May.
Federal prosecutors and the FBI took up the case in 2009 after a previous case brought by the
New Orleans district attorney was thrown out because of a prosecutor’s misconduct.
(An earlier version of the story
was corrected to fix spelling of last name of Kurt Engelhardt, not Englehardt, and last name of James Brissette, not
Bresette)
(Editing by Greg
McCune and Lisa
Shumaker)
