Danziger Bridge shootings

Common card · No. 292999

On the morning of September 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, members of the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD), ostensibly responding to a call from an officer under fire, shot and killed two civilians at the Danziger Bridge: 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison. Four other civilians were wounded. All of the victims were African-American. None were armed or had committed any crime. Madison, a mentally disabled man, was shot in the back. The shootings caused public anger and further eroded the community's trust in the NOPD and the federal response to Hurricane Katrina overall. The NOPD attempted to cover up the killings, falsely reporting that seven police officers responded to a police dispatch reporting an officer down, and that at least four suspects were firing weapons at the officers upon their arrival. On August 5, 2011, a federal jury in New Orleans convicted five NOPD officers of myriad charges related to the cover-up and deprivation...

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