“Me and you are the odd ones out in the 5th District,” Barrios said. Villavaso did not break, and would not become a witness.
Barrios used raw language in another talk with Hunter, not knowing the conversation was being taped. Referring to the District Seven supervisors, Barrios again cast himself as an outsider. “Whatever them bitches did, they wasn’t going to involve me because, you know, they didn’t know me,” he said.
Police reports said Barrios was part of the pack of officers firing at the citizens, and when Kaufman asked only those officers who fired their weapons to sit down that Sunday morning, Barrios was among them. But the officer, gripping a Remington 870 shotgun that Sunday morning, later contended he never pulled his trigger. When the Justice Department announced its one-count charge against Barrios on April 16, 2010, it accused him only of obstruction of justice in the cover-up, not of shooting at victims. The DOJ “charges that Barrios and other officers discussed the stories that they would tell about what happened on the bridge and that, on Jan. 25, 2006, before the officers gave formal, audiotaped statements about the incident, they gathered with supervisors in an abandoned and gutted out building, where they again went over the stories they would tell on tape.”
With the storm looming, the officer’s family had fled New Orleans. Barrios stayed behind, and then did “extraordinary work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, rescuing people and doing that around the clock,” said his lawyer, Robert Glass. Now he was admitting to the cover-up.
His admission did not come without drama. After Barrios entered his guilty plea in court, his wife stood up as a New Orleans federal prosecutor gave a press conference and blurted out that her husband had been forced to plead guilty. Emotions, Barrios would say, had overwhelmed her.
Officer Ignatius Hills also agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department. Hills, who had lied to protect himself, decided to lie no more.
By the summer of 2010, three officers and two supervisors pleaded guilty, cutting their cumulative potential prison time by decades by agreeing to turn over evidence and testify against their own. Lohman was the first to go, retiring in the beginning of February 2010 and, little more than three weeks later, pleading guilty in federal court to obstruction of justice. He admitted encouraging underlings to provide false stories about the events leading up to the shootings and encouraging “the involved sergeants to come up with a story justifying the shooting.”
The same day Lohman pled guilty, February 24, 2010, Bowen, Gisevius, Villavaso, Hunter, Hills, and Barrios were administratively reassigned by the force, assigned to desk duties amid the mushrooming federal probe. Once again, they could no longer wear the NOPD uniform and could not drive police vehicles.
Two weeks later Lehrmann pleaded guilty to a federal charge of failing to report the cover-up.
And then, in April, the shrapnel began to fell the officers themselves. Hunter, who fired the first shots from the Budget truck while steering with one hand and shooting with the other, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. He now admitted that the police aimed their weapons at unarmed victims. Sergeant Bowen, Hunter said, fired his assault rifle “in a sweeping motion” toward civilians trying to shield themselves behind a concrete barrier on the bridge.
Nine days later Officer Barrios resigned, and federal charges followed. Then in May, it was Officer Hills’s turn: another resignation by an officer on the bridge, and another federal obstruction charge. Marion David Ryder, the phony cop whose distress call helped set the catastrophic events in motion that Sunday morning, pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents.
The police brotherhood, bonded by Katrina, was now tearing apart.
Finally the lies broke open like the levees.
For the federal government, and the victims who pressed for answers for nearly five years, the guilty pleas signaled a ringing rebuttal to the police line. In piercing the police department’s wall of lies, the federal team convinced some of the guilty to come clean, and ugly truths washed forth. In turn, those cooperating witnesses shaved years, or even decades, from their prison terms. In the world of criminal prosecution, plea deals spin the wheels of justice. Yet in the federal courthouse of New Orleans, myriad judges would soon view the deals cut with the Danziger officers as being too sweet on the guilty.
Soon enough, the prosecution would be on the defense.
Yet for now the resignations and plea deals presaged the most significant turn to come: a string of federal grand jury indictments naming every officer who fired his weapon and the supervisors who scrubbed the truth.
CHAPTER 17
USA V. BOWEN, GISEVIUS, FAULCON, VILLAVASO, KAUFMAN AND DUGUE
ON JULY 12, 2010, in the US District Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana, the federal government’s Civil Rights Division filed one of the most significant cases in its history.
“Indictment for Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law, Use of a Weapon During Commission of a Crime of Violence, Conspiracy, Obstruction of Justice, and False Statements,” read the opening summation of the thirty-two-page federal grand jury indictment.
Indicted were Sergeants Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius Jr. and Officers Robert Faulcon and Anthony Villavaso, four of the shooters on the bridge; and homicide investigators Sergeants Arthur “Archie” Kaufman and Gerard Dugue, who coauthored the fifty-four-page incident report in May 2006 that concluded the Danziger Bridge case was considered solved.
The federal charges documented a damning indictment of the shooting and cover-up and described how innocent victims had been snared in the NOPD crossfire and whitewash. Nearly five years after the shootings on the bridge, the unvarnished story had come to light in New Orleans. In plain language, the twenty-seven-count indictment charged that
• Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, and Villavaso shot James Brissette Jr. on the bridge, killing him in a civil rights violation.
• Faulcon shot Ronald Madison, killing him in a civil rights violation.
• Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, and Villavaso shot Susan Bartholomew, “willfully depriving her of the right, secured and protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a law enforcement officer.”
• Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, and Villavaso shot Leonard Bartholomew III, Lesha Bartholomew, and Jose Holmes Jr., causing bodily harm to each due to unreasonable use of police force.
• Bowen used unlawful force against Ronald Madison. “While acting under color of law,” the indictment said, Bowen “kicked and stomped Ronald Madison while Madison was on the ground, alive but mortally wounded.”
The indictment detailed the battery of weapons the officers unleashed on the bridge: two AK-47 assault rifles, a .40 caliber Glock 22 semiautomatic pistol, an M4 assault rifle, and a Mossberg shotgun. It said all six defendants engaged in a cover-up, conspiring with Lieutenant Michael Lohman, Detective Jeffrey Lehrmann, and others.
The facts behind the conspiracy count stretched for nine pages in the indictment, exposing the clumsy police fraud and cover-up. Immediately after the shootings, “Kaufman and Bowen specifically discussed using Hurricane Katrina to excuse failures in the investigation, and thereby to help make any inquiry into the shooting go away.”
The NOPD investigators, led by Kaufman and Lohman, failed to collect evidence, dismissed potential witnesses without questioning them, and invented stories justifying the shooting. Kaufman planted a gun, lied under oath during Lance Madison’s bond hearing that Lance had a gun, and lied again when he said he found the revolver in the grassy area aside the bridge a day after the shootings. Kaufman, Bowen, and Gisevius, working with Lohman and Lehrmann, “repeatedly discussed the false statement that defendant Bowen would give to justify the shootings on the Danziger Bridge.”
Bowen lied under oath during his January 25, 2006, audiotaped statement, the indictment said, and Kaufman and Dugue “failed to question or challenge statements they knew to be false.” Before that statement, Kaufman and Dugue huddled w
ith Bowen, Gisevius, and Villavaso in the NOPD Seventh District police station to get their stories straight.
“Defendant Bowen then took the lead in explaining the false story that he would tell to justify the shooting, and the other officers discussed the false stories they would tell in order to remain consistent with Bowen’s story.”
Gisevius lied when he said he saw Lance Madison fire a gun, and omitted, under oath, that he had repeatedly fired a rifle on the bridge.
Faulcon, who had retired from the force, was not among those gathered in the gutted police building to compare notes and get their stories on the same page, but provided an audiotaped statement in June, five months later. Faulcon perpetuated the whitewash, the indictment said, right after the shooting and in his subsequent sworn statement. “Faulcon, after being given advice about how to make his shootings appear justified, provided or approved of a false and misleading statement in which he falsely claimed that the civilians on the bridge, both male and female, were armed and fired at police, and that Faulcon shot Ronald Madison because Madison noted a police presence and quickly turned, reaching for an object in his right waistband.”
The indictment detailed the ever-shifting police reports, from the thirty-two-page report to the seventeen-page version to the seven-pager and, ultimately, the fifty-four-page report that listed “Lakeisha Smith” and “James Youngman” as firsthand witnesses. The same report said Susan and Leonard Bartholomew told police Jose Holmes fired first. Another lie, exposed.
And, the indictment charged Kaufman for the stories he shared during his friendly chat with federal agents on January 22, 2009. It called out Dugue for telling agents “he had no concerns about the veracity of the officers’ statements or the correctness of their actions. In fact, he had many ‘red flags’ and ‘question marks’ about the officers’ stories, but he reported the questionable information as fact.” Kaufman obstructed justice by his phony notation in police logs claiming he found Lance Madison’s gun a day after the shootings, and he and Dugue lied in the fifty-four-page report by claiming the gun was Madison’s.
All the defendants conspired to violate the civil rights of Jose Holmes by falsely prosecuting him, and Bowen, Gisevius, Kaufman, and Dugue committed the same crime against Lance Madison. Bowen made up a series of misleading statements to obscure what had really happened, falsely claiming the Bartholomew family fired guns at the officers and that “after the shooting, he saw two guns on a walkway near the dead and injured civilians; that he kicked the guns off of the bridge; and that he saw Lance Madison throw a gun into the Industrial Canal.” Officer Villavaso lied too, saying that civilians fired guns, and claiming that after the Budget truck came to a stop, officers yelled, “Police! Show me your hands!”
The indictment included “Special Findings” that had deep resonance for the families of the men killed that morning.
Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius Jr., Robert Faulcon Jr., and Anthony Villavaso II “killed James Brissette intentionally” and “intentionally killed or attempted to kill more than one person in a single criminal episode.”
Robert Faulcon “killed Ronald Madison intentionally; intentionally inflicted serious bodily injury that resulted in the death of Ronald Madison.”
Those four officers now faced the prospect of life in prison, or possibly the death penalty, for taking the lives of Ronald Madison and JJ Brissette.
With the indictment unsealed, federal authorities issued strong words about the police actions and cover-up that had, for five years, buried the truth.
Jim Letten, the US attorney based in New Orleans, said the indictment would bring to justice the officers who abused their badge and send a message to the community of law enforcement officers “who do serve the people and honor the badge.” Most of all, the indictment should help “make certain that no one should ever have to fear those whose job it is to protect them.”
Attorneys for the accused officers said the indictment told just part of the story. To them, the charges symbolically whitewashed the larger saga of what the police officers encountered post-Katrina. The officers responded to a life-or-death call, amid a time of unprecedented chaos, and now were painted as criminals for hopping into the Budget truck and racing to the scene of a reported gun battle.
“It was a tragedy. It wasn’t an intentional act of murder that the government is trying to portray it as,” attorney Eric Hessler, representing Robert Gisevius Jr., told a local reporter. “The government has ignored the circumstances and conditions under which these officers were operating. For them to say that these officers intentionally went out and shot and killed unarmed civilians, knowing that they were unarmed and posed no threat, is certainly the wrong conclusion.”
Faulcon was arrested in Texas, and the three indicted officers with him in the Budget rental truck turned themselves into FBI headquarters in New Orleans. Bowen, Gisevius, and Villavaso arrived together, sending a signal that the officers would stand side by side. All four were held in federal detention, with no chance for bond. Unlike in state court, the federal charges guaranteed they would not be set free while awaiting trial and would not return to NOPD desk duty. Their police careers appeared to be over. Dugue and Kaufman, accused of the cover-up but not the shootings, were freed on bond; Dugue, fighting the charges, later took legal steps for his case to be tried separately from the other five defendants.
At the New Orleans Police Department, the unquestioned defense of the troops appeared to ebb, at least for a moment, as the federal case was unsealed. Police superintendent Warren Riley suspended without pay the three officers still on the force. Bowen, Gisevius, and Villavaso were unable to sign their “Notice of Suspension” paperwork because they were locked up without bond.
Four months later, on November 8, 2010, Riley reversed himself. He cancelled the suspensions of Sergeants Bowen and Gisevius and Officer Villavaso. The Danziger shooters remained behind bars. At the NOPD, they remained part of the family.
CHAPTER 18
JUDGMENT TIME, JUDICIAL QUESTIONS—AND AN OFFICER’S SHAME
WITH THE POLICE SHOOTERS now off the streets and plotting their defenses to the indictment, the next wave of justice began to be administered in the federal courthouse. This wave targeted the officers turned federal witnesses, who stood in the US federal courthouse in New Orleans to face their own sentences. As they did, prosecutors appeared to stand under judicial scrutiny along with them.
On September 22, 2010, former detective Jeffrey Lehrmann stood first for sentencing. The first to cooperate and not among the shooters on the bridge, Lehrmann hoped for probation. US district judge Lance M. Africk handed Lehrmann the maximum he could receive for the felony conviction he pleaded guilty to in his deal with prosecutors: three years in prison. Africk was sending a message that would echo in other courtrooms of other defendants now cooperating with the government.
A year later, federal prosecutors sought to cut Lehrmann’s sentence in half, to eighteen months from thirty-six. Not only was Lehrmann the first officer to cross the blue line of police brotherhood, “Mr. Lehrmann cooperated fully with the government, providing substantial assistance throughout the government’s investigation and prosecution,” prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein wrote, arguing for a reduced sentence.
Lehrmann was living in Arizona when the government first reached out to him, and he “flew to New Orleans at his own expense in order to set the record straight.” Once he turned, he did so fully, wearing a wire, including a several-hour-long session with Gisevius, the government said. In that session, Gisevius acknowledged the larger cover-up, a powerful piece of evidence for the federal government. Lehrmann would later take the stand as a government witness once the other officers stood trial.
“The government has discussed this recommendation with the victims in this case, who share the government’s belief that the ultimate sentence meted out should achieve a careful balance between deterrence of wrongdoing and encouragement of truthful cooperation,” Bernstein wrote in the mo
tion coauthored by Theodore Carter, an assistant US attorney based in New Orleans, and Department of Justice civil rights prosecutor Cindy K. Chung.
It took two days for Judge Africk to deny the request. The judge used strong language to describe Lehrmann’s crimes, including his role in creating the name Lakeisha Smith as a witness fabricating the police line that Lance and Ronald Madison were armed.
“It is particularly abhorrent that as a result of material false statements made by you and other officers, Ronald Madison, the young man shot to death on the Danziger Bridge, and Lance Madison, who was unlawfully detained, were characterized as common criminals,” the judge said. “You, being oblivious to the emotional turmoil already sustained by the Madison family, compounded and magnified it by characterizing them as such.”
The judge hammered away at the litany of lies and fabrications Lehrmann had taken part in, from going along to retrieve the “ham sandwich” from his buddy Kaufman’s garage, to helping create the other invented witness, James Youngman.
“As you knew,” the judge said, “James Youngman did not exist.”
Africk, a former state and federal prosecutor who once served as chief of the Criminal Division for the US attorney in New Orleans, added another admonition. “Those particular actions, while troublesome enough when committed by non-law enforcement witnesses, are even more troubling and disturbing to this court when committed by a law enforcement officer,” he said.
Lehrmann waited four years before beginning to speak the truth, Judge Africk noted.
“It was only after Mr. Lehrmann heard the footsteps of an expansive federal investigation that he came forward,” the judge said in his courtroom. “Apparently, Mr. Lehrmann’s conscience waited approximately four years to reveal itself.”
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