New Orleans Officers Lose Credentials 18 Years After Katrina Shootings

A police oversight board in Louisiana on Thursday permanently stripped the credentials of four former New Orleans officers who were convicted of their roles in killing unarmed civilians on a bridge in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina nearly 20 years ago.

The board, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, decertified the former officers Robert Faulcon Jr. and Anthony Villavaso, as well as two former sergeants, Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius, for their roles in opening fire on six New Orleans residents, two of whom died, on the Danziger Bridge just days after the levees broke and then orchestrating a sweeping cover-up.

Another sergeant, Arthur Kaufman, was stripped of his credentials for his role in covering up what happened.

Bob Wertz, a training manager at the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement, the umbrella body for the police board, said officers who are convicted of felonies should automatically be referred to the agency for decertification.

However, a variety of factors, including a change to the law in 2017 about who qualifies for decertification and a processing slowdown during the coronavirus pandemic, contributed to a prolonged delay in stripping the former officers of their credentials, Mr. Wertz said.

The brazen violence and deception after the shooting on the bridge was just one of many cases of police brutality in the weeks before and after Hurricane Katrina that led to the U.S. Justice Department’s investigation of the New Orleans Police Department and the implementation of a federal consent decree — the government’s preferred method of overhauling troubled police departments — that is still in place today.

Prosecutors had argued that Mr. Bowen, Mr. Gisevius, Mr. Villavaso and Mr. Faulcon had raced to the bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, in a truck, responding to a distress call from another officer.

Some of them were armed with assault rifles, while others had a shotgun or a semiautomatic pistol.

Prosecutors said that the officers immediately opened fire on members of a family who were walking to a grocery store in the largely abandoned city.

The officers shot James Brissette, 17, a friend of the family, multiple times, killing him, and gravely injured four others. The officers continued to fire even as the family members raced to safety.

Several of the officers then chased Ronald and Lance Madison, two brothers, who were on their way to check on a dentist’s office that belonged to their oldest brother.

Mr. Faulcon shot and killed Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old intellectually disabled man, in the back with a shotgun and stomped on his back as he lay dying, prosecutors said.

No guns were recovered at the scene, and witnesses — both officers and citizens — testified that the victims were unarmed.

The cover-up began immediately, prosecutors said.

Several of the officers gathered in an abandoned police station to make sure their stories were consistent.

Lance Madison was arrested at the scene and charged with attempted murder of a police officer. A grand jury later cleared him of the charges.

The officers were convicted on 25 counts in 2011, including federal civil rights violations in connection with the two deaths.

A year later, the four officers directly involved in the shooting — Mr. Bowen, Mr. Gisevius, Mr. Villavaso and Mr. Faulcon — were sentenced to terms ranging from 38 to 65 years.

Prosecutors argued that Mr. Kaufman, who was charged with investigating the shooting, instead helped lead the efforts to hide what happened. He was sentenced to six years.

But setbacks for the prosecution quickly accumulated.

A federal judge, citing prosecutorial misconduct, ordered a new trial for the five officers, who ultimately pleaded guilty and received significantly reduced sentences of three to 12 years.

According to prison records, Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Villavaso have been released. Mr. Bowen, Mr. Gisevius and Mr. Faulcon remain imprisoned.

In 2016, New Orleans announced a $13.3 million settlement over three major police brutality cases from the weeks before and after Hurricane Katrina, including the Danziger Bridge killings.

In an interview, Sherrel Johnson, Mr. Brissette’s mother, said she couldn’t believe it had taken so long for the officers who killed her son to have their credentials revoked.

Ms. Johnson said Mr. Brissette was about to enter his senior year of high school when he was killed, and he had passed an entrance exam for the Marines.

Instead, Mr. Brissette’s body was on the bridge for three days with a tarp over it, she said. There were so many bullet wounds in her son’s body that officials eventually stopped counting them, she said.

“I think about it daily,” she said. “Sometimes I have to fight back the tears, and tell myself, ‘Nope, nope, nope. You can’t do that. It’ll make me sick,’” Ms. Johnson said. “After all these years it will still make me sick. The depth of the hurt is so deep, it’s so deep inside of me, some days I don’t know what to do.”