NOT GOOD AT ALL, NOPD

New Orleans — “Ann” said she was walking to a friend’s house on Tulane Avenue in September when a New Orleans police officer stopped her for no real reason and asked for her identification. By the end of their interaction, she was in handcuffs, booked with crimes against nature and verbally abused by a local judge. “Ann” said her only crime was being a young, black transgender girl.

Like others, she was too afraid to tell her story in public or use her real name. Instead, a friend read her testimony before the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee on Wednesday. Her presentation was one of several the committee heard — directly or indirectly — from members of the local lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning community.

If this is how the NOPD officers spend (waste) their time in the murder capital of the country, then their priorities are in serious disarray.  No wonder the department will be under a years-long consent decree order by the US Department of Justice due to "a history of discriminatory policing on the basis of race, ethnicity and sexual status."

New Orleans has always been a city of great diversity, and it is unconscionable that the department is guilty of discriminatory behavior in its approach to policing in a city in so great need of a well-functioning police department that treats all citizens fairly.  And for heaven's sake, the police should concentrate their efforts on finding the murderers and perpetrators of violence who make living in certain areas of the city like living in a war zone.

Kudos to Wes Ware, director of BreakOut, "an organization that seeks to end what it calls the criminalization of LGBTQ youth in New Orleans" and the members of the organization and to the Justice Department for their efforts to bring about fair and equal treatment by NOPD of all the citizens of New Orleans.  

DEATH ON THE DANZIGER BRIDGE

From NOLA.com.

A New Orleans police officer who fired his gun at civilians on the Danziger Bridge a week after Hurricane Katrina pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday, offering a chilling account of what transpired on the bridge that early September day in 2005.

Michael Hunter, 33, became the first officer who actually participated in the shooting to enter a guilty plea. Two investigators have already confessed to playing roles in a wide-ranging cover-up of the police shooting, which injured four unarmed civilians and left two men dead.

Hunter, who resigned last week after he was charged in federal court, contends that fellow officers shot at people they should have seen were unarmed. The account of events Hunter signed Thursday afternoon, called a factual basis, provides the most specific details to date about officers' actions on the bridge, which spans the Industrial Canal at Chef Menteur Highway.

Hunter, 33, said a New Orleans police sergeant fired an assault rifle at wounded civilians at close range after other officers stopped shooting and after it was clear that the police were not taking fire. He also says he saw another officer in a car fire a shotgun at a fleeing man's back, although the man did nothing suggesting he was a threat to police. That man, 40-year-old Ronald Madison, who was severely mentally disabled, died of his wounds.

As part of his plea, Hunter also acknowledged taking part in a conspiracy with colleagues to conceal the circumstances of what he considered an unjustified shooting. At one point, in a meeting with other officers, a supervisor said "something to the effect of, we don't want this to look like a massacre," the court document says.

"I don't think you can listen to that account without being sickened by the raw brutality of the shooting and the craven lawlessness of the cover-up," said U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance after the factual basis was read aloud in the still courtroom by prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein, deputy chief of the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.

Beyond saying that I'm shocked and sickened by the story of members of the New Orleans Police Department allegedly gone wild on a shooting spree and then even more members of the department allegedly participating in a massive cover-up of the carnage, I don't know what to say.

Incoming mayor Mitch Landrieu has his work cut out for him when he takes office in May. I believe that he has the potential to be a good mayor, but cutting the murder rate and cleaning up the NOPD is a daunting challenge. I wonder why he even wanted the job. Is the NOPD fixable?

Present mayor Ray Nagin seems to have left office before his term is up, except for attempting to close the deal on contracts that Landrieu will be stuck with during his term.

Pray for the city of New Orleans.