Of the five officers prosecuted at trial, only Robert Faulcon Jr. took the stand. His testimony in USA v. Bowen et al. on July 27, 2011—describing his personal career arc, the challenges of patrolling New Orleans, and the unprecedented turmoil in the days after Hurricane Katrina—form the framework of this chapter. Other sources flesh out the profile material. One is a letter on Faulcon’s behalf by his wife, Stacey Scineaux, written to the sentencing judge on November 20, 2011. At Faulcon’s sentencing on April 4, 2012, his father addressed the court, and his words likewise helped describe the officer. At trial one of Faulcon’s defense attorneys sketched a family history in opening remarks June 27, 2011, and that information is also cited here.
I obtained information about the commendations Faulcon earned while on duty, including when he responded after a citizen pulled a gun on a mail carrier on June 4, 2003, from the statements written on his behalf before sentencing. Separately, I obtained Public Integrity Bureau disciplinary files from the city of New Orleans.
CHAPTER 5 A City Under Water
Descriptions of how the families and Officer Faulcon navigated the first days after the storm come in part from testimony in the criminal trial, USA v. Bowen et al., such as Lance Madison’s testimony describing how he and brother Ronald made their way from Lance’s condo to their brother’s dental office. During a trip to New Orleans, I retraced the path from Lance’s condo to the dental office. My visit to the dental office helped me describe its setting. Other information about the brothers’ ordeal comes from the Madisons’ civil lawsuit against police, Madison v. City of New Orleans et al., 2006, and from research and interviews with Lance Madison’s criminal attorneys Nathan Fisher and Shannon Fay. I first spoke with Nathan Fisher on October 21, 2013, interviewed Shannon Fay in Louisiana on November 12, 2013, and interviewed Fisher and Fay again on September 5, 2014. Four months later, Nathan S. Fisher died, at age 72, after a long battle with cancer.
Information about Sherrel and JJ comes from my interview with Sherrel Johnson in April 2012. Descriptions of the Bartholomew family’s days after Katrina come from testimony at trial by Susan Bartholomew and other members of the family, including nephew Jose Holmes Jr.’s testimony in USA v. Bowen et al., on June 29, 2011.
Officer Faulcon’s testimony described his days after the hurricane flooded the city and the steps he took to survive. The conversation with his father is cited in a letter Robert Faulcon Sr. wrote the court on August 23, 2010. I obtained other information to describe the police tension in those tortuous days, including the August 30, 2005, police report on the shooting of Officer Kevin Thomas a day after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall. Times-Picayune coverage of the Thomas case provided other details. Police officers who served during Katrina spoke at the sentencing for officers on April 4, 2012, which I attended, and some of their quotes are reflected here.
Information about Katrina’s destruction on New Orleans, and how even the local Homeland Security director was largely helpless to aid victims, comes from the US Senate report Hurricane Katrina: A Nation Still Unprepared. Other information describing Katrina’s landfall comes from sources including a hurricane timeline compiled in Wikipedia and multiple media reports at the time of the storm’s arrival, including coverage by the New Orleans Times-Picayune, CBS News, Reuters, and the Los Angeles Times.
CHAPTER 6 108
Jennifer Dupree, the officer who placed the initial 108 distress call over the police radio, testified at trial on June 29, 2011, in the case of USA v. Bowen et al.; that testimony forms the framework for part of this chapter. I reviewed a New Orleans Police Department district map to help me describe the boundaries of police districts. Testimony from other trial witnesses, including officers Robert Faulcon Jr., Robert Barrios, and Michael Hunter, provided further information about the police pursuit after the 108 call. The section describing officer Kenneth Bowen’s second degree murder case is built from Times-Picayune coverage of that shooting, and from Public Integrity Bureau records I obtained from the city of New Orleans law department. Trial testimony from Susan Bartholomew and Lance Madison describe the respective families’ paths to the bridge that morning.
CHAPTER 7 The Shots on the Bridge
This chapter is built largely from documents in the federal prosecution against five officers and from trial testimony, including from Michael Hunter on July 6, 7, and 27, 2011, in the case of USA v. Bowen et al. It is also built from testimony from multiple other witnesses, including Lance Madison on July 8, 2011, along with Susan Bartholomew, her children Lesha and Little Leonard, and nephew Jose Holmes Jr. Other trial testimony in USA v. Bowen et al. comes from officers on the scene that morning: Kevin Bryan, Robert Barrios, Ignatius Hills, and Taj Magee, citizen witnesses Morrell Johnson and Robert Rickman, paramedic Stanton Doyle Arnold, and Louisiana State Police sergeant Michael Christopher Baron.
The description of the shootings on the bridge is also built from the opening statement on June 27, 2011, by prosecutor Barbara “Bobbi” Bernstein in the federal trial, including details on which officers fired at which victims. Bernstein’s narrative includes details described in the federal government’s indictment of the officers in USA v. Bowen et al. and information from the fifty-four page police report, Attempted Murder of a Police Officer, New Orleans Police Department case number J-05934-05, justifying the shootings, such as the description of victims shot on the bridge.
CHAPTER 8 Triage
This chapter is built from the courtroom testimony of Craig Robert Thompson, the surgeon who was living at the West Jefferson Medical Center after Katrina destroyed his home, and who treated the four shooting victims and helped save their lives. Thompson testified on July 12, 2011, in the case of USA v. Bowen et al.
CHAPTER 9 NOPD Triage
Weeks after the hurricane’s landfall, New Orleans Police Department supervisors filed reports describing how ill-prepared the city was for Katrina. I reviewed these memos, filed in October 2005 and titled “Hurricane Katrina After Action Reports,” along with testimony Captain Timothy P. Bayard made to the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on January 30, 2006. Bayard’s testimony described the hazards New Orleans police encountered in the days after Katrina.
CHAPTER 10 The Cover-Up
Lieutenant Michael Lohman was the lead supervisor on hand when the 108 call went out. A well-regarded officer, Lohman arrived at the bridge and was immediately troubled by what he saw: victims bloodied on the ground, but unarmed. Lohman’s description of the cover-up, outlined in his testimony at the USA v. Bowen et al. trial on June 28 and 29, 2011, after he agreed to cooperate with authorities, is one key source for this chapter. Another officer who took part in the cover-up but later entered a plea agreement and testified is Detective Jeffrey Lehrmann. His testimony at trial July 11, 2011, further describing the cover-up, is also cited here. Trial testimony on July 5, 2011, from another officer on the bridge, Kevin Bryan, who did not fire his gun and was not charged, provides further detail explaining how the cover-up played out at NOPD. Testimony on July 6 and 7, 2011, from a cooperating witness who did fire, Michael Hunter, describes how the police story took form. Hunter was also called to the stand by the defense on July 27, 2011.
Public documents enhance this chapter. Information describing the lack of investigative zeal that morning comes from the federal indictment of officers filed by the US Department of Justice in July 2010 in the case of USA v. Bowen et al. The fullest description of the official police account comes from the fifty-four-page report the department filed to explain the shootings Attempted Murder of a Police Officer, New Orleans Police Department case number J-05934-05; the report detailed the questioning of officers by fellow NOPD officers. I also obtained a two-page press release issued one month after the shooting, dated October 4, 2005, and headlined “Update Information on Two Suspects Fatally Wounded and Four Others Wounded,” describing the citizens as criminals and the police as victims. Other details of the cover-up were presented in court during
prosecutor Bernstein’s opening statement.
Details of Robert Faulcon’s decision to leave the force and go to trucking school come from his courtroom testimony on July 27, 2011, in the case of USA v. Bowen et al.
CHAPTER 11 Shock, Funerals, Police Visits—and a Family’s Quest for Answers
Information about the Madison family comes from multiple sources, including an interview with Romell Madison on July 12, 2013, in New Orleans. Quotes from sister Jacquelyn were made during her trial testimony July 7, 2011, in the case of USA v. Bowen et al. During my research, I discovered a piece of writing Jacquelyn’s daughter, Brittney Brown, compiled for a Xavier University five-year commemoration of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Katrina 5 Years Later: Reflections from the Xavier Family. Her powerful passage included details of the family’s escape from New Orleans and of the dreams that haunted her mother in the days before the storm. Officer Ignatius Hills had been a patient of Doctor Madison as a child, a fact gleaned from Hills’s testimony on June 30, 2011, in USA v. Bowen et al.
I interviewed Nathan Fisher and Shannon Fay, the Baton Rouge lawyers who represented Lance Madison after he was charged with attempted murder and who helped set him free, in 2013 and 2014. Fisher and Fay generously shared their experience working this case, which came when Fay was still in law school. Lance’s testimony on July 8, 2011, in the case of USA v. Bowen et al. detailed his experience moving from facility to facility after his arrest.
I reviewed the transcript of the bond court hearing held September 28, 2005, at the Hunt Correctional Facility following Lance’s arrest and incarceration, including sworn testimony by Sergeant Arthur Kaufman. In that hearing magistrate judge Gerard Hansen expressed doubt that Lance fired at anyone. I researched Hansen’s background as a judge, including a profile that aired October 20, 2013, by WWLTV-4 in New Orleans upon his retirement. In September 2014, I visited the family Sno-Bliz stand in New Orleans where he had worked as a child. I also obtained a one-page police report, called a Gist Sheet, that came under question at the bond hearing after Lance’s lawyers noticed two sets of police handwriting on the single page. The Gist Sheet, dated September 4, 2005, is New Orleans Police Department Item Number I-0003-05.
Details about Ronald Madison’s funeral come from the booklet “A Celebration of Life” on November 2, 2005. Also obtained were Ronald’s death certificate, prepared by the State of Louisiana in November 2005, and the autopsy conducted by the Orleans Parish coroner on September 14, 2005.
The section describing the Bartholomew family’s ordeal after the shooting comes from trial testimony by mother Susan Bartholomew and nephew Jose Holmes Jr. The scene describing Leonard Bartholomew IV’s reunion with his family is built from his testimony in the federal court case on July 5, 2011, and that of cousin Jose.
Multiple sources helped me describe what happened to Sherrel Johnson and her family in the months after Hurricane Katrina. Details about her son-in-law Lawrence Celestine’s death come from a Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Andrea Celestine’s lawsuit against the city, Celestine v. City of New Orleans, 2010, and from media accounts including a Times-Picayune editorial published November 17, 2010, “Probing the Death of New Orleans Police Officer Lawrence Celestine.” Researching Sherrel Johnson’s quest to find her son JJ, I explored a state of Louisiana Department of Public Health program meant to connect missing loved ones after Katrina, including a press release, “Identification of Katrina Victims Continues,” published December 30, 2005. My understanding of that public health program was enriched by a New York Times article by Shaila Dewan, “Storm’s Missing: Lives Not Lost but Disconnected,” published March 1, 2006. I also reviewed the autopsy report performed on James Brissette Jr. on September 14, 2005, by the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office, with Brissette initially described as “unknown black male.”
Other information about JJ came from an interview with Sherrel in April 2012, the Louisiana Weekly profile in 2011 that included the fact that she enrolled her son in school in Tennessee, and daughter Andrea’s court testimony in USA v. Bowen et al.
CHAPTER 12 Victims Shine a Legal Light
Before the district attorney filed charges against the officers on the bridge, the families made the first public accusations that the police killed unarmed residents and concocted a cover-up. Those contentions were made in a series of lawsuits filed against the city, Mayor Ray Nagin, police superintendent Edwin P. Compass III, and others. I reviewed those lawsuits, which frame a key portion of this chapter. Also obtained was the fifty-four-page police report defending the shootings in May 2006. The quote from former superintendent Compass—“Give me some love!”—came from “Deluged,” a January 9, 2006, New Yorker article by writer Dan Baum.
This chapter benefited from interviews with Shannon Fay and Nathan Fisher, the defense team for Lance Madison, and talks with Mary Howell, the Madison family’s civil attorney, who has a decades-long history of representing citizens abused by police in New Orleans and who shared some of that history with me. I began reaching out to Howell in November 2011 and met the lawyer at her New Orleans law office September 4, 2014.
I obtained a statement Lesha Bartholomew wrote after the shootings on the bridge and quote from it here. Edwin Shorty Jr., the lawyer for the Bartholomew family, had read Lesha’s statement in court during the sentencing for officers in the USA v. Bowen et al. case on April 4, 2012, a hearing I attended. Shorty shared Lesha’s statement with me in September 2013, and later answered my questions during an interview October 1, 2014.
During my research, I obtained a letter from a Winn-Dixie regional vice president to Lance Madison, returning his fifty-dollar check from September 18, 2006.
The section on the city’s colorful history of district attorneys benefited from a New York magazine profile of one of the state’s most colorful politicians, headlined “Edwin Edwards Will Live Forever,” written by Mark Jacobson in July 2014.
CHAPTER 13 The District Attorney Brings Charges—and the Police Brotherhood Fights Back
Three days after Christmas 2006, the office of Orleans Parish district attorney Eddie Jordan brought murder and attempted murder charges against seven New Orleans Police Department officers who exited the Budget truck with weapons drawn. Those charges—filed December 28, 2006, in the case State of Louisiana v. Robert Barrios, Kenneth Bowen, Robert Faulcon, Robert Gisevius, Ignatius Hills, Michael Hunter, and Anthony Villavaso—open this chapter, along with details from the DA’s decision to formally drop charges against Lance Madison. I obtained those files detailing charges brought by the state grand jury.
Interviews with Madison’s defense team helped describe how the family pushed the DA to find the truth, and this section benefited from reports in the Times-Picayune and Associated Press describing the various reactions in New Orleans to this significant legal turn.
During my research, I gathered information describing the police response to the charges, including messages written on Signal 26, an online message board “by and for the NOPD.” I reviewed dispatches written by Mike Glasser, the president of the Police Association of New Orleans, including one sent December 30, 2006, urging police supporters to rally around the troops as they faced their booking on the charges days after New Year 2007.
I recreated the scene of the accused officers walking to their booking surrounded by swarms of supporters from viewing Associated Press and Times-Picayune photographs taken that day.
CHAPTER 14 From Narcotics Cop to Police Attorney
Eric Hessler served seventeen years as an NOPD officer and then became a lawyer representing the police union and Sergeant Robert Gisevius Jr., one of the accused officers. His perspective, as a former street officer who served under multiple police bosses, and current defense attorney in the Danziger Bridge case, was relevant. I interviewed Hessler at length September 12, 2014, and conducted a follow-up interview January 13, 2015. His views frame this chapter. They are coupled with court information I researched on cases when Hessler serve
d the force, including a Louisiana Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal ruling in a civil lawsuit brought over his 2000 police shooting incident, Robertson et al. v. Hessler and the New Orleans Police Department, filed March 19, 2000.
CHAPTER 15 Judicial Ties, Prosecutorial Error, and the NOPD Walks Free
Researching the state case brought against the seven officers, I reviewed a report filed January 5, 2007 by Judge Raymond Bigelow shortly after the case landed on his docket in which he disclosed ties between his office and the defense team. On September 3, 2014, I interviewed Bigelow about those ties and his decision to grant bond for the officers accused of murder. Bigelow’s view—that he disclosed the connections and bond and would have stepped aside if the DA raised an issue—is reflected in this chapter. The DA did not immediately seek to remove him, and Bigelow stayed on the case. I made five attempts to interview former DA Eddie Jordan from July 30 to September 4, 2014; he never responded. Likewise, I contacted the assistant DA who handled the case, Dustin Davis, on November 27, 2013. By then a federal prosecutor in Miami, Davis said he could not discuss an active case.
Even as the state case moved ahead, some voices, notably the Madison family, were pressing for a federal civil rights investigation. They didn’t believe the case would resolve locally and urged the Justice Department to step in. One voice pushing for federal intervention was former New Orleans mayor Marc Morial, whom I interviewed at length two times in 2014, on August 27 and September 5. His views, as a former mayor who advocated police reform and now as president of the National Urban League, were insightful.
I had earlier obtained Morial’s letter to the Congressional Black Caucus written on February 20, 2007, urging action and obtained similar letters written in early 2007 by sources ranging from the National Dental Association to a group called Safe Streets/Strong Communities. Assessing the police department’s history of abuses, I contacted Rafael Goyeneche III, president of the nonprofit Metropolitan Crime Commission, located in New Orleans, which works to root out corruption, and interviewed him on August 27, 2014. I reached former police superintendent Edwin P. Compass III and interviewed him briefly September 4, 2014. Statistics about the racial makeup of the police force and the city in 2007 come from research conducted for me by my colleague at the Associated Press Jack Gillum. It was built from public documents, including a racial breakdown of the force and city.
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