The T-P’s Brendan McCarthy had all the skinny yesterday afternoon and not long after my email inbox started buzzing with activity related to the sentences handed down to the 5 NOPD officers convicted of killing innocent civilians on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina. My good friend Editilla at the Ladder once termed the post Katrina NOPD as “feral lawmen” and that is as good a description of the whole deal as any. In their defense a NOPD officer was brutally shot in the head while attempting rescue operations just days after the storm but the response was classic NOPD in the indiscriminate use of blunt force brutality against the populace and the result of that were murders like happened to the innocent people on the Danziger Bridge, one of whom was back shot and stomped.
The activity in my email had nothing to do with any of the above though as everyone down here that knows anything about New Orleans understands how the NOPD has operated for generations. Rather the email universally dealt with the grandstanding McCarthy so well conveys in his article. Judge Engelhardt, Diaper David Vitter’ former campaign manager in particular had a good bit to say, some of which struck me as over the top, considering what happened on the bridge. Maybe I’m just a bit jaded after 4 years of moderating Slabbed but with due respect prosecutors have been cutting plea deals, approved by the court I might add, for longer than I’ve been on this planet so I found his outburst a bit odd. This of course does not count the on camera appearance of the local US Attorney after these high-profile type cases and Jim Letten certainly did not disappoint that way either.
In any event I know some of you folks want to flesh this topic out a bit more so have it.
sop
Henry L. Mencken 1951 (Sal Perricone) once commented that Judge Engelhardt never tried a case in Federal court as a lawyer.
It’s curious that if the judge thought there was so much perjury occurring during the Danziger trial, he did not refer any witness to the U.S. Atty’s office for prosecution.
Wasn’t Engelhardt the guy that paid Vitter’s prostitution tab from his campaugn fund?
“Citing witnesses for perjury “at this trial would be like giving out speeding tickets at the Indy 500,”
i see the judge is a platoon fan.
needed another cup of coffee. apocalypse now. i have seen the charlie sheen directv commericial too many times.
ausa perez made an interesting statement that made me think of whitmer.
“You don’t go to the witness store to pick out your witnesses.” You deal with what is presented to you.”
A most insightful comment … one that is both disturbing and revelatory at the same time …
I will forego my Whitmer rant for the moment so that I might add this critique of Judge Englehardt’s rather curious soliloquy: the message is jaded by the hypocrisy of the messenger…
Yesterday, my judgment was clouded by my personal DISGUST for and HATRED of Lettenemgo, Perez (and his colleague “Bernstein the Bitch”), and Welker (who never met a fat Mammy he didn’t hug and kiss. on camera – Welker, you PANDERER!). But a graphic by Dan Swenson on page A-7 of today’s Times-Pick-Youuur-Nose puts things in perspective. It shows that wounds to each victim, and where each was on the bridge when the gunshot wounds were inflicted. I remember hearing about “the shootings on the Danziger Bridge” on the radio in the aftermath of KATRINA, and something just didn’t sound “right” (that was because the cops’ story kept “changing”). Remember the demonstration in favor of the cops outside of Police Headquarters, before the Feds (from D.C. – NOT Lettenemgo’s office) got involved? Two last points: (1) I wonder what might have happened if the victims had stopped, turned around and raised their hands as the cops arrived on the bridge and shouted, “DON’T SHOOT! DON’T SHOOT! Could it have been much “worse” than it turned out to be? (Just where the heck were the victims coming from and where were they going, anyway? New Orleans was flooded, and the Lower Ninth Ward was flooded). (2) Were Englehart’s comments about his hands being tied an indication that he would have imposed harsher or lesser sentences (he only gave Kaufman 6 years)? Thanks, Ashton O’Dwyer.
AROD: Here’s a GOVERNMENT movie for your library.The plot parallels the Greyhound ride you took in which the GOVERNMENT did the driving.
The movie “The Crazies” depicts a town wiped out by the GOVERNMENT military when an Air Force jet carrying a deadly, incurable mutated virus crashes in a small town and some of its residents are infected.
Not only are infected rounded up and killed, but even the healthy are placed in make shift, fenced prisons and eventually killed.
In the end even after the GOVERNMENT nukes the entire city a married couple manages to escape to Cedar Rapids where the GOVERNMENT begins the genocide again.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyLF4yDUr10&w=560&h=315%5D
Its the same reoccurring theme where the GOVERNMENT screws up (Gulf of Tonkin, JFK assassination,the Cardinals’ football player killed by friendly fire, etc.)then in trying to cover up its mistakes ends up killing more people and persecuting witnesses who bear the TRUTH.