US police officers sent to jail over Katrina killings
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E-mail Xinhua, April 5, 2012
Five former police officers in New Orleans, the U.S. state of Louisiana on Wednesday were sentenced to lengthy prison terms for shooting and killing civilians when Hurricane Katrina swept through that city in 2005, local press reported.
According to local Times-Picayune, the sentences were handed down by U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt. The five former cops were convicted at a trial last summer. The four defendants convicted of participating in the shootings themselves -- which claimed the lives of two civilians, and badly injured four others in the chaos after Hurricane Katrina hit the city -- all face prison terms of 38 years or more, while lead investigator Arthur Kaufman, who helped to cover up the shootings, was sentenced to six years.
Robert Faulcon Jr., 48, received the stiffest sentence: 65 years in prison. Faulcon is the only officer tied to the second of the two fatal shootings on the Danziger Bridge in New Orleans -- that of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally challenged man. Madison was killed by a shotgun blast to the back fired by Faulcon on the western side of the bridge.
Former Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, 38, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Bowen sat in the front passenger seat as a Budget rental truck full of officers sped to the Danziger Bridge on the morning of Sept. 4, 2005, 6 days after the hurricane struck New Orleans. Prosecutors said that Bowen jumped out of the truck and sprayed an AK-47 at a concrete barrier where civilians were hiding.
Former Sgt. Robert Gisevius Jr., 39, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Gisevius was one of several officers who rode to the bridge in the back of the Budget truck. He opened fire with an M-4 rifle after jumping out the back of the truck, and later, with Bowen and the investigators, helped orchestrate a years-long cover-up to hide what actually happened on the bridge.
Anthony Villavaso II, 35, was sentenced to 38 years in prison. He, too, rode in the back of the Budget truck, and then jumped out and fired an AK-47 at unarmed civilians on the bridge. Nine casings matching that AK-47 were recovered by investigators.
Kaufman, 55, a former sergeant at the police department, was sentenced to six years in prison. He was the only one of the five defendants sentenced who was not already incarcerated; Engelhardt ordered him to report to prison on May 23.
Kaufman, who retired from the department in May 2011, was the only one of the five defendants who was not involved in the shootings themselves. He was the lead investigator in the case, and was found to have authored several reports and draft reports containing false or fabricated information.
Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans' levees on August 29, 2005. Over 80 percent of the city was under water, and widespread looting and armed gangs roaming the city made the disaster relief effort to a military operation.
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