Ten years after the shootings on the bridge, the victims left court this April morning without resolution in one of the most egregious police civil rights abuses of our lifetime, waiting for the next legal ruling. What does the Danziger case tell us about the similar cases now playing out before a captivated nation? With renewed attention focused on police killings in the nation’s cities, I kept returning in my mind to an insight Marc Morial, the former New Orleans mayor and current president of the National Urban League, shared as I interviewed him about the Danziger Bridge case in the summer of 2014.
“In order to convict a police officer, you don’t have to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt,” Morial said. “You have to convict him beyond all doubt.”
I also recalled the words of Edwin Shorty, the Bartholomew family lawyer, as the press for legal closure remained in limbo: “How much justice do you expect when you’ve been shot by a police officer?”
In other words, when police are the suspects, the barriers to achieving justice are that much higher. Police proponents would argue with that assessment, I am sure. But exploring the shootings on the bridge, and the long, bumpy road to justice that followed, I could come to no other conclusion. Police gunned down innocent victims and built a paper trail of lies to cover their crimes. They were paraded as heroes in the city’s streets, beat back state charges, and, following their convictions in federal court, won an appeal on issues having nothing to do with the events of September 4, 2005.
Would the newer wave of police killings level the legal field? In 2014, police officers went uncharged in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown. Yet by 2015, a legal tide seemed to shift. Officer Slager faced a murder charge for Walter Scott’s death. In Baltimore, a passionate young prosecutor, Marilyn J. Mosby, announced criminal charges against six police officers, three white and three black, in Freddie Gray’s death. The police union chastised what it called a rush to judgment and, even as many residents rejoiced in Baltimore’s streets, some worried that the state attorney’s quest to bring justice had been pushed too quickly. A riveted nation braced for what would come.
The Baltimore charges represented a potential shift in the larger struggle to hold police officers accountable. Mosby made her announcement just eleven days after Freddie Gray’s death. In New Orleans, it took state prosecutors more than fifteen months to file charges over the bridge shootings, charges that came only after the families filed a series of lawsuits documenting the horrors. In May 2015, the DOJ announced it would open a civil rights investigation into the Baltimore Police Department, just as it had with the NOPD following the abuses after Hurricane Katrina.
In New Orleans, the families of the victims continue to pray.
Sherrel Johnson awakes each morning to a home without her son, JJ, the seventeen-year-old killed on the bridge. “It’s never going to go away,” Sherrel told me recently. “I loved him to death and I loved the ground he walked on.
“I wonder what he would be. I wonder ‘what if.’ My whole life,” she said, “is spent wondering.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Shots on the Bridge was constructed with support from many voices. Helene Atwan, director of Beacon Press, saw promise in my proposal and encouraged me to do justice to the events of September 4, 2005. Helene’s careful read helped propel these pages, and I thank the entire Beacon Press team for its support. I am indebted to my literary agent, Esmond Harmsworth, of Zachary Shuster Harmsworth, who answered my every query with sage advice.
I owe a debt of gratitude to my fellow writers in the Johns Hopkins University graduate writing program, where I obtained a master’s degree while researching this book. Colleagues read early sections and responded with rich feedback. The Hopkins teaching community helped me hone my words and ideas: Cathy Alter, David Everett, Margaret Guroff, and Robert Wilson.
Many people took time to field my questions, sharing recollections or, in some cases, photographs. I thank Romell Madison and the Madison family, Sherrel Johnson, Shannon Fay, Nathan Fisher, Eric Hessler, Marc Morial, Mary Howell, Timothy Meche, Davidson Ehle III, Robin E. Schulberg, Raymond Bigelow, Gary Bizal, Jose Holmes Jr., Townsend Myers, Dylan Utley, Robert Glass, Edwin Shorty Jr., Rafael Goyeneche, Sal Perricone, and Daniel Abel.
Finally, a special thanks to four journalists. Joe Mozingo, a skilled Los Angeles Times writer, read my manuscript and offered astute feedback. Michael Sallah, a Miami Herald investigative journalist, fielded my calls for advice with one message: keep reporting. Juliet Linderman, my AP colleague who covered portions of the Danziger legal twists while with the Times-Picayune, kindly read a draft of these pages and offered feedback. And, I thank my wife and fellow journalist, Beth Reinhard, who is at once my staunchest supporter and sharpest-eyed critic. Beth read my working draft and returned pages blanketed with notes. All of her suggestions came down to one point: let the story tell itself.
ABOUT THE RESEARCH
My research for Shots on the Bridge is built from tens of thousands of pages of public documents, interviews with key voices in Louisiana and beyond, and multiple visits to New Orleans, where I strove to recreate the steps of the men and women who found themselves atop the Danziger Bridge the first Sunday after Hurricane Katrina. I explored a trove of sources to better understand these events and the people affected by them. Chief among them is the nearly six thousand pages of trial transcripts in the Department of Justice criminal prosecution of five New Orleans Police Department officers in 2011, United States of America v. Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon, Anthony Villavaso and Arthur Kaufman. I obtained this trial transcript, which includes the most detailed description, from the witnesses themselves, of the police shootings on the bridge and the subsequent police cover-up. The transcripts include opening and closing statements from prosecutors and defense attorneys, opening a window into the perspective of each side in this seminal civil rights trial.
Beyond the transcripts, I examined other documents in the USA v. Bowen et al. federal case file that, as of March 2015, included more than 1,300 separate filings. These include everything from the initial indictment to the jury verdict, and multiple filings in between and since the case went on appeal. As the defendants faced sentencing, for instance, several family members, friends, and former employers filed letters attesting to their backgrounds; those files helped flesh out some of the profile material of officers. And, the case file included Judge Kurt Engelhardt’s 129-page ruling overturning the conviction and ordering a new trial.
Separately, I reviewed filings on the federal prosecution of officers who entered plea deals and agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department. Multiple other public records aided my research. The Madison family, Bartholomew family, Jose Holmes Jr., and Sherrel Johnson all filed civil lawsuits against the city over the harm inflicted on their families; I reviewed the case files, which include narratives fleshing out the events of Sunday, September 4, 2005. I examined the fifty-four page NOPD report, Attempted Murder of a Police Officer, New Orleans Police Department case number J-05934-05, filed May 2006, to justify the shootings on the bridge; explored After Action Reports filed by police supervisors detailing the department’s readiness for Hurricane Katrina; and filed public records requests to obtain police disciplinary files of the officers accused in the Danziger shootings and cover-up. In response, the city attorney’s office in July and September 2013 provided me indexes of Public Integrity Bureau cases involving the officers, which included the disposition of each case. But the city said some of the case-file narratives I sought “could not be located and are presumed destroyed in the 2005 flooding of the Public Integrity Bureau headquarters following Hurricane Katrina.” Among other records, I reviewed the 737-page Senate report produced in 2006, Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared, and the Justice Department Civil Rights Division report Investigation of the New Orleans Police Department, published March 16, 2011.
Paper documents alone cannot tell the story of September 4, 2005, as officers raced to the
bridge after a distress call six days after Hurricane Katrina devastated their city. I made five reporting trips to Louisiana, starting in April 2012, when I traveled to New Orleans to attend the sentencing of five officers who stood trial and were convicted by a jury. The federal courtroom downtown was packed—with supporters of the officers filling one side and supporters of the victims the other. Before the judge issued sentences, police officers, family, and friends of the officers addressed the court; relatives of the two citizens killed and four wounded spoke too. This hearing enhanced my understanding of the case and, while in New Orleans, I made contact with key participants. In that trip and four subsequent visits to Louisiana in 2013, 2014, and 2015, I retraced the path the officers and citizens took that morning to reach the Danziger Bridge. I reached out to the family victims and their attorneys and to the attorneys or families of the officers convicted of the shooting and cover-up. My research was enriched by interviews with people affected by the shootings on the bridge—from a mother whose son was killed that morning to a former mayor who urged federal authorities to launch a civil rights review, to a former judge who dismissed an earlier state case against police, to a former NOPD narcotics officer turned lawyer for police, to the brother of another victim killed on the bridge.
The case posed reporting challenges, particularly after Judge Engelhardt, in September 2013, vacated the jury verdict, essentially putting justice on hold and raising the specter of a second trial. Citing the judge’s ruling, several story subjects said they could not discuss the case while it remained on appeal. I sought interviews with the officers convicted in federal court, both the group of five who entered guilty pleas and the separate group of five who stood trial in New Orleans. Their attorneys, without exception, said their clients would not discuss the case while it remained pending. Likewise, officials with the FBI and US Attorney’s Office declined multiple interview requests. Those hurdles made my reporting trips to Louisiana all the more important. I spent hours retracing the steps officers and residents took that Sunday morning to reach the Danziger Bridge, following the respective paths as they were brought together by nature and fate. I researched the backgrounds of victims and police officers through multiple sources, obtaining autopsies, a death certificate, and funeral brochure for some victims; and letters family and friends wrote on behalf of officers, along with internal police investigative files. This research, coupled with thousands of documents from the trial and other interviews, allowed me to recreate the narrative produced here.
I was first drawn to this case in August 2011 when I happened to read an Associated Press account of the federal jury conviction of the officers. Reading the story that afternoon in my newsroom in Washington, DC, I knew instantly these events were worthy of a book. Over the next three-plus years, as I learned more about the events that morning, the lives ensnared atop the bridge, and the circuitous path of justice that followed, my initial instinct evolved into a firm conviction. My retelling of those events benefited from media coverage of the Danziger Bridge case, starting with that first AP story along with coverage of prior police corruption trials involving the NOPD, often in the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
Here, chapter by chapter, I will describe the sources of my research for Shots on the Bridge.
PROLOGUE
I relied on multiple, disparate sources to create this opening section of the book, which begins with officers awaiting their call at the Crystal Palace six days after Hurricane Katrina and ends with victims on the bridge, the cover-up in bloom, and families seeking justice.
My visits to New Orleans allowed me to describe both the seven-lane Danziger Bridge and the Crystal Palace, and I reviewed an online brochure describing the banquet hall. Details describing Hurricane Katrina come from myriad sources. The description of the levee collapse and 911 emergency calls come from Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared (2006), the report the US Senate issued a year after the hurricane. Images of families trying to survive the hurricane come from photographs taken by the Associated Press and other media. The quote “This whole place is going under water!” comes from a YouTube video of a storm chaser navigating New Orleans the morning of Katrina, Katrina New Orleans Sunrise, August 29, 2005, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpTlukPbHnY.
The Senate report is the source for the section describing how unprepared New Orleans was for Katrina. The quote beginning, “There were no rules in place . . .” comes from an interview with Eric Hessler, a former New Orleans Police Department officer who now is a lawyer for police, on September 12, 2014.
The description of the police arsenal that morning comes from court documents in the criminal case, USA v. Bowen et al., 2010, and testimony from officers called to the stand. Information involving past disciplinary cases involving officers comes from the Public Integrity Bureau files I obtained from the city of New Orleans under a public records request.
Newspaper and other material are sources for prior police corruption cases including the case against “Robocop,” the Kim Anh restaurant shooting, and the Algiers 7. Notable among them was a November 11, 2010, story retracing the Algiers 7 brutality case by Brendan McCarthy in the Times-Picayune. A 1998 Human Rights Watch report, Shielded from Justice: Police Brutality and Accountability in the United States, included a recounting of the case involving Robocop.
Information on the department’s prior civil rights record comes largely from the Justice Department’s Investigation of the New Orleans Police Department, published in March 2011 by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
The quote in the paragraph about the police brotherhood, describing how the officers served without adequate food, leadership, or shelter, comes from defense lawyer Paul Fleming Jr.’s opening statement June 27, 2011, at the trial of Officer Robert Faulcon Jr. and other officers, USA v. Bowen et al. The quotes in the paragraph to follow, citing the traumatic days of patrolling after Katrina, come from the sentencing hearing for the police officers in that same case on April 2012, which I attended. The description of the scene atop the bridge and the shooting of citizens comes from testimony at the trial of the officers in USA v. Bowen et al. The quote about the cover-up—“I knew this was a bullshit story”—also came out during the trial. The racial divide exposed in early police reports was gleaned from an interview on September 10, 2014, with Timothy Meche, the lawyer for officer Anthony Villavaso, and explored in cross-examination of a police witness at trial.
CHAPTER 1 A Family’s Bond, a Threatening Storm
I relied on interviews and research to describe the Madison family. Part of the family profile information comes from Romell Madison, the oldest of the Madison children, who was kind enough to sit down with me in between treating patients at his dental office during one of my visits to New Orleans in 2013. Dr. Madison later fielded some of my follow-up calls, including one shortly after the federal judge overturned the jury convictions.
Other material about the family comes from myriad sources. I obtained “A Celebration of Life” booklets produced for the funerals of Ronald Curtis Madison in 2005 and family patriarch James Madison in 2002. These tributes included information on the histories of Ronald, his father, and the Madison family. They also included photographs that helped me describe this stalwart New Orleans family.
I visited the Madison family neighborhood in the Academy Park section of New Orleans, allowing me to describe the community and put its location in context of the events that would later unfold on the bridge. Information from the Zillow website helped me further describe the family home and the price of residences in this quiet community. Likewise, I was able to describe Romell Madison’s office after a personal visit there. Other family history was gathered from a biographical interview with Romell by writer Tina Gianoulis in 2004.
Trial testimony provided further information about Ronald Madison and how his brothers and sisters watched over him as he rode his bike around the block. Interviews with Romell and paperwork in the family’s civil lawsuit against the city of Ne
w Orleans explained the family’s decision to leave Ronald behind with his brother Lance and the family dogs. Jacquelyn Madison Brown’s description of her brother Ronald came during her testimony at trial July 7, 2011. Trial testimony in the criminal case against police also provided some of the profile information about Lance Madison. I researched his listing on the roster of the NFL Kansas City Chiefs.
CHAPTER 2 A Mother’s Last Chance
This chapter is built largely from a two-hour interview with Sherrel Johnson, the mother of James Brissette Jr., on April 5, 2012, the day after officers were sentenced for their crimes. Sherrel, desperate for answers, followed every step of the case against the officers. She was eager to speak of her son, and I have strived to capture the essence of a teen on the cusp of adulthood.
JJ’s sister, Andrea Celestine, testified at trial in the federal prosecution of officers on July 6, 2011, and that testimony enriched this chapter, including the Spic and Span anecdote and the username for his first e-mail address. This chapter also benefited from the profile “Mother of Danziger Victim Still Seeking Justice,” by Edmund W. Lewis in the Louisiana Weekly, August 29, 2011.
CHAPTER 3 Eleven People, One Van, a Second-Floor Apartment
This chapter, focusing on the Bartholomew family and their nephew Jose Holmes Jr., is built largely from trial testimony by family members in the prosecution of officers in USA v. Bowen et al. in New Orleans federal court. Susan Bartholomew was the first to testify, on June 27, 2011, and other family members testified over the following weeks of trial, with daughter Lesha testifying last, on July 21, 2011. Lawsuits against the city by the Bartholomew family, Bartholomew v. The City of New Orleans et al., 2006, and separately by Jose Holmes Jr., Holmes v. City of New Orleans et al., 2006, provide further details.
CHAPTER 4 An Officer, a Baby Due, a Choice
Shots on the Bridge Page 25