Shots on the Bridge : : Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina

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Prologue: On the bridge -- Part I: The killings. A family's bond, a threatening storm -- A mother's last chance -- Eleven people, one van, a second-floor apartment -- An officer, a baby due, a choice -- A city under water: survivors cling to life, police lose their grip -- 108: officer in distress, a race to the bridge -- The shots on the bridge: lives intersect- two dead, four maimed, endless barrage of gunfire -- Triage -- NOPD triage: the after action reports -- Part II: Making it all go away. The cover-up -- Shock, funerals, police visits- and a family's quest for answers -- Victims shine a legal light -- The District Attorney brings charges- and the Police Brotherhood fights back -- From narcotics cop to police attorney: an insider's view -- Judicial ties, prosecutorial error, and the NOPD walks free -- Part III: The trials. Conspiracy cracks under federal glare -- USA v. Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, Villavaso, Kaufman and Dugue -- Judgment time, judicial questions- and an officer's shame -- In the courtroom -- Part IV: Justice held up. The online commentators -- From prep school to politics to Danziger: a judge's prayerful path -- Judgment day: a mother and brother confront the convicted -- The consent decree: a history of police abuse, documented -- "The interests of justice"?: the reversal -- Epilogue: As a national civil rights movement stirs, justice is on hold in New Orleans.
"A gripping tale of police brutality, investigating the cover-up of a deadly NOLA cops' shooting of six unarmed civilians, published on the tenth anniversary of Katrina. Six days after Hurricane Katrina's landfall in New Orleans, New Orleans Police Department officers opened fire on residents crossing the Danziger Bridge. When the shooting stopped, a mentally challenged man and a seventeen-year-old boy were dead, riddled with gunshot wounds. A mother's arm was shot off, her daughter's stomach gouged with a bullet hole, and her husband's head pierced by shrapnel. Her nephew was shot in the neck, jaw, stomach, and hand. All six of the victims, along with two others arrested at the scene, were black and unarmed. Before the blood dried, the shooters and their supervisors had hatched a cover-up. They would plant a gun, invent witnesses, and charge two of their victims with attempted murder. The NOPD hailed all the shooters on the bridge as heroes. Shots on the Bridge explores one of the most dramatic cases of injustice in the last decade. It reveals the fear that gripped the police of a city fallen into anarchy, the circumstances that led desperate survivors to go to the bridge, and the horror that erupted with the gunfire. It dissects the cover-up that nearly buried the truth and the legal maze that, a decade later, leaves the victims still searching for justice"-- Provided by publisher.
"On Sunday September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina's landfall in New Orleans, two sets of lives intersected on the Danziger Bridge. One was the police who stayed behind as Katrina roared near, desperate to maintain control as their city spun into chaos. The other was the residents buried by the storm and, this Sunday morning, searching for survival. The police and survivors collide in a frenzy of gunfire. The Shots on the Bridge explores one of the most dramatic cases of injustice seen in our country in the last decade - the massacre of innocent people, carried out by members of the New Orleans Police Department, in the brutal, disorderly days following Hurricane Katrina. It takes the reader into the heart of post-Katrina New Orleans, revealing the fear that gripped the police of a city slid into anarchy, the circumstances that led desperate survivors to arrive on the bridge that morning, and the horror that erupted when the police opened fire. It dissects the cover-up that nearly buried the truth, and the legal maze that, a decade later, leaves the victims still searching for justice. It profiles the victims on the bridge, and the officers who, racing to the bridge after a distress call, unloaded their weapons. Equal parts human saga, police procedural, and legal narrative, The Shots on the Bridge reveals a civil rights struggle for justice in a nation still grappling with cases of police misconduct, and the victims of the blue wall of silence"-- Provided by publisher.

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