Cop pleads guilty to Katrina murders

Actually, its ex-cop Michael Hunter. From ProPublica:

Former New Orleans police officer Michael Hunter pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of conspiring to obstruct justice and failure to report a felony for his role in the Danziger Bridge shootings, which occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He’s the third ex-cop to admit guilt in the ongoing case.




On Sept. 4, 2005, Hunter and other officers barraged a group of civilians with gunfire, killing two and wounding four others. The latest guilty plea, covered in depth by our partners at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, offers fresh details about that bloody day.



The judge who accepted Hunter’s guilty plea said she was “sickened by the raw brutality of the shooting and the craven lawlessness of the cover-up” by police.

Almost five years after the fact..It's about time justice prevails in this case. PBS's Frontline has more.

It started with a photograph

From ProPublica:

It was three days after the levees broke: Thursday, Sept. 1, 2005 — in my limited view, the day things completely fell apart in New Orleans.

The desperation was mounting. The cavalry wasn’t coming, it seemed. We were in it alone.

As we drove up Religious Street, just past the Saulet Apartments, we saw a dicey situation ahead. Police-issue Crown Victorias blocking the intersection. A parked bus and a wrecked limo. And a swarm of police officers in the street, guns drawn, facing the other direction.

Georgiev, a Macedonian national who has spent much of his life covering wars, went into gung-ho mode. He took a right — toward the lake — on Race Street. Then left at the next block, St. Thomas Street. Then left again on Richard. And suddenly, we were right in the middle of chaos.

We saw a man, clad in a white T-shirt, down on the pavement, hands behind his back, not moving. We were both sure he was dead. A lot of agitated police officers hovered around.

It seemed no one noticed, though we were less than 50 feet away. Georgiev shot off a few frames, then started to drive away. As he passed through the intersection, the cops yelled at us to stop. Some had their guns raised. I shouted to stop, and Georgiev did, not as quickly as I would have.

A few cops rushed over and stuck their guns in our faces. I said I worked for the Picayune. I was told to shut up and get out.

They threw us up against a cinderblock wall and frisked us. There was a lot of cursing, and one of the officers mentioned a shootout.

One of the cops grabbed the notebook out of my shorts. They also snatched one of Georgiev’s cameras.

Lying in the weeds

A few months ago, I reached out to Georgiev, who lives in Macedonia, and he sent me two photos of the incident. A closer look at them reveals that there seem to be two guys on the ground, not one. Georgiev’s second shot shows a human form in the street, next to one of the police cars, wearing a red shirt and hidden behind weeds.

As it happens, the existence of a second person squares with the only official account of the incident I’ve been able to get thus far. That account came from Anthony Cannatella, a semiretired deputy chief with 42 years on the force who during Katrina was the commander of the 6th District, where the incident happened.

Cannatella — to his credit, one of the only officers who will talk about any of this — was one of the cops who responded, though I didn’t see him that day. As Katrina descended, Cannatella says he told “his guys” this: “We’re gonna do basic police work until someone comes and relieves us.”

Read the rest of the article here.  There are federal grand juries investigating the actions of the NOLA PD after Katrina. How they shot first and never asked questions later. In my heart, I know there were police officers that did the right thing..just as there are police officers who did not. How anyone will be able to separate them, years later, is the $50,000.00 question.

But you really can't put a price on a human life.

From our Dept of WTF?

I couldn't believe it. I thought perhaps it was the codeine cough medicine that was jerking me out. When I heard what The Shrub said in his cough...final Presser today about Katrina, I thought I was going to stroke the hell out.

First, he didn't even get the number of "people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed." correct..it took days and days for any federal help to get there. There were so many fuck ups by the Fed's, who can name them all in five minutes? The sumbitch outright lied about Katrina today in his press conference...may Gawd have mercy on his lying ass.

Bush's legacy will always be about Iraq, torture, loss of our constitutional rights and finally the worst...Katrina. Katrina was an abject failure of the highest order...on our own soil.

Watch Rachel and Jeb Horne tick off all the failures regarding FEMA and the Bush administration as a whole, when it comes to responding to Katrina, the levee's failing and 1800 people dying:

One friggin week left of this lying sack of sheep shit..one more week.

Going back to bed, my throat is killing me and I now have a headache from thinking about the horror that was..and sadly still is..Katrina and how The Shrub lied his ever-loving ass off about it today.

Another goodie from Steve at Bring it On.

Thank you SteveO ;)

Katrina made landfall today...

Three years ago it was the beginning of the horror that still manifests itself today in the gulf region. The Angry Black Bitch has a worthy post up about this topic as well.

Katrina however, was merely the conduit. Katrina showed us that the levees were fallible and the Bush Administration was worthless.

A noble cause still needs donations to help rebuild the NOLA area. Please consider sending them a few bucks if your able, I have done so in the past and will today to commemorate this horror that still affects hundreds of thousands of human beings. The Musicians Village fund still wants to make it right for people affected...help them if you can. Click the graphic to donate.

A thought-provoking post..

This is a great post about the bullshit that is the United States of America, although it starts out on a different issue..that of Timor. A short blurb:
Is the US a failed state? The thought came to my mind three times in one day, so it is begging for a response.

First, the issue of "failed states" was raised by Alan Narin, journalist and long-time human rights activist on behalf of the people of East Timor. In response to a question about the recent assassination attempt against the Timorese president, Narin said[3]:

Some are saying Timor is a failed state, that here the international community has been pouring all this money into Timor, and all they get out of it is chaos. I think those comments distort the situation.

*snip*

Then Narin turns the lens on the United States:

But if you're going to judge other states by that standard, you would have to say that, say, Australia or Indonesia or the US are much more of a failed state than Timor is, because those are countries that have been killing civilians overseas.


And the evidence on the second point is glaring. The US government failed dramatically in preparing for and responding to Hurricane Katrina. Years after Katrina, New Orleans remains a disaster area, due in great part to failures of the state.


GDAEman has some good stuff up on his blog..and I would like to suggest if you have a minute or three you check him out. I like his name and what it signifies too :) If you do drop by his humble abode..let me know.

Artwork by The Worried Shrimp

Top 10 Ethics Scandals for 2007

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Voices from the Gulf....

Tomorrow is the day Katrina hit. Here is a new video that shows how very little has changed for the residents of the gulf coast and NOLA specifically. There are still tens of thousands that can't come home. 30,000 families are scattered across the country in FEMA apartments, 13,000 are in trailers, and hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt.

Sign the petition

Urge the United States Senate to pass Senator Dodd's Gulf Coast Recovery Bill of 2007 (S1668) to assist the Gulf Coast region in rebuilding the infrastructure lost after the Katrina and Rita disasters.

Passage of this bill is an important step towards returning the Gulf Coast residents to their homes.

These are good, hard-working people that our government has forgotten..

DO NOT LET THEM BE FORGOTTEN.

Tags: NOLA, Katrina, Brave New Films, Voices from the Gulf

August 29, 2005

The day Katrina hit the coast. The day normal life ended on the gulf coast of our United States. The day BushCo fell down on the job and all hell began to break loose. The day BushCo’s biggest domestic fuck-up began. Need I say more? nah..

Obama is unveiling his plan for fixing the region today. All or most of the Democratic candidates for President will be streaming into NOLA to point their fickle fingers of fate at BushCo and how crappy a job he and his cadre are doing. The NYT has a writeup of Obama’s grandiose plan to fix the region and the agency’s that deal with this kind of catastrophy. A small wisp of it:

The Gulf Coast restoration, Mr. Obama said, has been weighed down by red tape that has kept billions of dollars from reaching Louisiana communities. As president, he said, he would streamline the bureaucracy, strengthen law enforcement to curb a rise in crime and immediately close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet in order to restore wetlands to protect against storms. Mr. Obama also said that he would seek to lessen the influence of politics in the Federal Emergency Management Agency by giving its director a fixed term, similar to the structure of the Federal Bureau of Investigatio n. The FEMA director would serve a six-year term, under Mr. Obama’s plan, and report directly to the president.

Doesn’t the head of FEMA report to the President now? He is also planning other big moves, ones that probably need to be made..such as opening a DEA office down there. My, that is all well and good, but I read recently the prisons are over-crowded already pal. Another snip of what he is planning to say:

“Let New Orleans be the place where we strengthen those bonds of trust, where a city rises up on a new foundation that can be broken by no storm,” Mr. Obama is planning to say Sunday, according to remarks provided by his aides. “Let New Orleans become the example of what America can do when we come together, not a symbol for what we couldn’t do.”

Man, he sure is good with the rhetoric isn’t he? But no where in the article do I see how he plans to pay for his great plans..Isn’t that just as important as what you plan to do? One should note that two years after the flood, only 40% of the FEMA money has reached the area. Just fixing that bullshit will go along way to fixing the region.

Tags: Katrina, NOLA, FEMA, Obama

Crossposted at Bring it On!

New Orleans' Rebuilt Levees "Riddled With Flaws"

From National Geographic:

Almost a year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declared that it had restored New Orleans' levees and floodwalls to pre-Hurricane Katrina strength.

But the system is actually riddled with flaws, and a storm even weaker than Katrina could breach the levees if it hit this year, say leading experts who have investigated the system.

The unwelcome news comes as residents gird for what is predicted to be a "very active" Atlantic hurricane season, and as residents are still slowly rebuilding their homes and lives after Katrina.

During a recent inspection of the levee system with National Geographic magazine, engineering professor Bob Bea of the University of California, Berkeley, found multiple weak spots.

The most serious flaws turned up in the rebuilt levees along the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet ship channel.

The channel's levees had failed in more than 20 places when Katrina's storm surge pounded them, leading to devastating flooding in the Louisiana city's Lower Ninth Ward and in St. Bernard Parish, which borders the city to the southeast.

Bea found several areas where rainstorms have already eroded the newly rebuilt levees, particularly where they consist of a core of sandy and muddy soils topped with a cap of Mississippi clay.

"It's like icing on the top of angel food cake," Bea said. "These levees will not be here if you put a Katrina surge against them."

Bea also found that decade-old gaps remain in the floodwalls lining the Orleans Avenue Canal. And hurricane-damaged sections of the walls along the London Avenue and 17th Street Canals have not been repaired or replaced.

Even more troubling, water appears to be seeping under the stout new floodwall erected along the Industrial Canal to protect the Lower Ninth Ward.

(See an interactive map of the weak spots).Watch a video of University of California–Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea flying over the levees and discussing the defects.

Ain't that some shit my dear reader?

To read the rest of the National Geographic article click here for page two. It will make you sick perhaps..or make you cry. But you should be pissed no matter how you slice it.

Crossposted at Bring It On!

tags: Katrina, NOLA, Levees, Army Corp of Engineers