FBI seizes police files in (Katrina) bridge shootings

[kpete]

Source: The Times-Picayune

Federal agents this week raided the office of the New Orleans Police Department homicide division, seizing the files and computer hard drives of two officers assigned to investigate police conduct in one deadly post-Katrina shooting episode, law enforcement sources told The Times-Picayune.

Representatives of the FBI and NOPD confirmed the seizure late Thursday.

FBI agents served a search warrant Wednesday afternoon for files in the offices of two supervisors, Sgt. Gerard Dugue and Sgt. Arthur Kaufman, the sources said.

The two sergeants were the lead investigators who examined the shooting of civilians by police on the Danziger Bridge days after Hurricane Katrina. Gunfire from police, who were responding to reports of shots fired at officers, left two men dead and four people wounded.

Read more: http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/08/fbi_seizes_p...

[POAS]

1. K & R

[dbonds]

2. Does this mean FBI is investigating, or just seizing files to stop the local investigation?

[Mnpaul]

14. I looks like

the FBI is stepping in because the original investigation was tainted by the prosecutor leaked grand jury testimony to a witness. They were caught coaching a witness to cover their butts and got caught. The FBI stepped in on a case in my county in a similar way. A local county detective had stolen $300,000+ from every program including DARE. His buddies in the courts were going to give him probation and restitution when the Feds stepped in and said no, you are going to prison. The feds sentenced him to 7 years in a prison camp in Colorado.

[EFerrari]

15. That was my question. FBI still under Mueller for another 18 months. n/t

[defendandprotect]

3. k i c k -- and ditto on that question . . .

[bertman]

5. Civil rights violations? That's federal jurisdiction.

[caseymoz]

4. Good! Finally some justice might start to be done.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. yep. KICK!

[valerief]

6. kick

[NOLALady]

8. About effing time!

Yep. We have our own private little Gitmo.


"The allegations about Glover's death don't startle Mary Howell, a New Orleans civil rights attorney who's been litigating against the NOPD for more than thirty years. During the 1980s, Howell sued the force over the torture and killing of African-Americans by west bank police, crimes that led to the jailing of three officers, a multimillion-dollar settlement and a significant shake-up in the department. Officers, explains Howell, "would tie people down and put a bag over their heads until they started to suffocate. It was the New Orleans equivalent of waterboarding."

In Howell's view the department remains seriously dysfunctional. "The things that happened with the police department during Katrina were shocking," she says. "They were disturbing. I wish I could say they were aberrant. But they were not."

[TheDebbieDee]

9. Four years after the event?

They've had 4 years to alter and scatter the information. Come on!

[pleah]

19. Had to give them plenty of time to cover their asses. n/t

[jwirr]

10. Wasn't Blackwater down there guarding the rich? Eric Prince?

[EFerrari]

16. Yes, they were. n/t

[Left Coast2020]

23. How wonderful it would be to begin seeing some justice in

this and other cases. Blackwater, Gitmo detainees, Sibel Edmonds. I hope this is a sign of good things to come. And God, please throw some of these R-W bastards in jail for disrupting town halls on health care. Thank you.

[sasquatch]

11. Oops, too bad for you innate flatfoots

[gvstn]

12. K & R

[bluesmail]

13. If I was Dark Dick, (he assuredly has his own Dark , DARK PASSENGER)

Oh, forgot, our President has SS patrol on him. Never mind.

[flyarm]

17. I wish I could honestly say "GOOD"..but i just don't know..

Call me a skeptic..if you want..but after almost 4 years..the FBI is just now stepping in????

And we have all read eyewitness stories about what went on there..for how long now?..and the FBI is just now stepping in????????

Ya know 8+ years ago ..I would have believed and had faith it made a difference..now? not so much.

Now all I can do is "hope" those people can get justice..that leads me back to being a skeptic..and cynical.

Did i tell you to call me a skeptic?..well you still can!

Same guys running the FBI that were in the bag for bush..so ..that "hope" is quite deminished.

and then we have the time frame..day late, and a dollar short for my liking.

[barbtries]

18. does this mean

that there may be consequences for people who engaged in criminal homicidal behavior following the storm? i hope so.

[rucky]

20. about time!

[omega minimo]

21. Rec +69 for those who suffered and died in the Katrina NOLA televised genocide.

There's your legacy you Bushco bastards.

[sce56]

22. Hopefully this is not a case of justice delayed is justice denied!

About time hopefully the New DOJ is finally starting to cleanup the crap left by the Shrubs!

[winyanstaz]

24. Can it be we shall finally see Justice return to America????

This could be the start of something good.

[earcandle]

25. "starts" do keep us hungry for "completions" real justice to be done. lower classes have to pay

when they commit crimes, but somehow these rich asshats and
those who are harrassing congresscritters who are democrats
don't get tazed by the cops for disrupting the peace?  did
anyone see the Kerry event where that kid peacefully asked
Kerry some questions about why he did not win when the facts
were found that he did win?  And the cops that grabbed him,
pulled him down and tazered him over and over again while the
audience cheered?  I have hated Kerry for not stopping that
police event, and I have also pitied him for being powerless
demonstrating just how much hold these nazi characters have
on our government officials.  hey, how do we help them out?  

We got to find a way to put our money into a different
economy.  One that practices enlightened capitalism, and
doesn't genocide people we fund to become democratic
countries.... It really is too bizarre to continue to fund
this kind of atrocity hiding behind ambiguious and duplicious
means to ends we have no information on and no say in and
cannot stop the victimization of human beings anywhere as
long as we do.

How many of us have to die before we can clean it up?  Any of
us?  Don't we have already the ways and means to manage a
country without falling into this kind of dissarray and
duplicity?  We do.  Why have we no backbone?  Even those of
you who have been riding the wave, isn't it time to stop and
get a real life, while there are people who are still around
that can deliver that kind of recovery?

Recovery is not hard.  What is hard is access and respect for
going into the process, and something to do when you are out
that demonstrates the distinction between the harmed and the
recovered: commitment to tell the truth, trust yourself,
serve others.  We are all served when this occurs, and our
laws and regulations are already set up, sitting in file
cabinets, dusty, waiting for enactment.  Simple fucking
enactment.  Pull them out of the files, make them public,
everyone join in to make it happen.  

We are rule by war when we don't use our hearts and our minds
to let the social fabric be woven by our differences in a net
of order that insures our rights and privileges prevail.  To
let criminals take over our legacy and trash our ways causes
our own victimization. If we follow regulatory laws, and have
people manage those offices that provide those services paid
for with our  tax dollars, we are truly free to be.  If we
can have police trained in the law to be courteous public
servants and capable of protecting us  and happy to do so,
and never paid by our tax dollars or any private firms to
ever be in the business of harming us in any way then we will
know freedom.  

It is when we are free, that we can create.  We need
stability to take on the act of creation which requires that
all things in that act are coming into being at the same time
for the first time ever, and that in itself is total chaos. 
But joyess is the chaos generated by the acts of creation. 
Making something from nothing is fresh and new.  We know a
lot.  Lets make this work correctly. We look really primative
to our children.  No wonder they are lost or adapted.  They
need some good role models in the way that works  to have a
civilized society. Right now, South America has the best
examples of democracies in action for the people by the
people and we are trying  to stop it instead of enhance and
empower it.... this is assbackwards.

So do something, those out there in positions where you can. 
Make a difference!

Leonard Cohen is on channel 9 just now in San Francisco!  
bye