The incident resulted in the death of two civilians and the wounding of four others. The defendants will be sentenced before U.S. District Court Judge Kirk Englehardt on Dec. 14, 2011, according to an FBI press release.

Four officers—Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon, and Anthony Villavaso—were convicted in connection with the shootings of multiple victims, two of whom died. The four officers and a supervisor, Arthur “Archie” Kaufman, also were convicted of helping to obstruct justice during the subsequent investigations.

The evidence at trial established that officers Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon, and Villavaso opened fire on an unarmed family on the east side of the bridge, killing 17-year-old James Brissette and wounding Susan Bartholomew, 38; Leonard Bartholomew III, 44; the Bartholomew’s daughter, Lesha, 17; and the Bartholomew’s nephew, Jose Holmes, 19. The Bartholomew’s 14-year-old son ran away from the shooting and was fired at, but was not injured.

According to testimony, the second shooting occurred minutes later on the west side of the bridge, where officers shot at brothers Lance and Ronald Madison, killing Ronald, a 40-year-old man with severe mental disabilities. Witnesses testified that Faulcon shot Ronald Madison in the back as Ronald Madison ran away.

Furthermore, Bowen stomped and kicked Ronald Madison while wounded, but not yet dead. Ronald Madison later died at the scene.

“The officers convicted today abused their power and violated the public’s trust during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina—exacerbating one of the most devastating times for the people of New Orleans,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “I am hopeful today’s verdict brings justice for the victims and their family members, helps to heal the community and contributes to the restoration of public trust in the New Orleans Police Department.”

The four officers convicted of killing civilians face potential multiple life sentences. The officers face additional penalties for the remaining counts, which include charges related to a conspiracy to cover-up what had happened on the bridge, and conspiracies to file charges against two of the victims, Lance Madison and Jose Holmes, on the basis of false evidence.

According to testimony at trial, officers at the scene of the shooting arrested Lance Madison and charged him with eight counts of attempting to kill police officers. Officers collected no guns or shell casings on the day of the shooting, and 30 casings they collected more than a month later were fired by officers rather than civilians. Madison was held in jail for three weeks, but was eventually released without indictment.

The evidence at trial established that Kaufman joined the other four defendants in a conspiracy to cover-up what had happened on the bridge and to make the shootings appear justified. According to testimony, Kaufman obtained a gun from his home and claimed to have found the gun at the bridge on the day after the shooting, and he also made up witnesses and then created statements from the fictional witnesses to help justify the shooting. There was also testimony that Kaufman held a meeting in an abandoned and gutted out NOPD building, where he instructed officers involved in the shooting to get their stories straight before giving formal audiotaped statements about the shooting.

Kaufman, who concluded in a formal report that the shooting was justified and that Lance Madison and Jose Holmes should be arrested, was also found guilty of conspiring with other officers to have Madison and Holmes prosecuted on the basis of false evidence.

Kaufman faces a maximum penalty of 120 years in prison.

The trial follows guilty pleas by five former NOPD officers who admitted that they participated in a conspiracy to obstruct justice and cover-up what happened on Sept. 4, 2005. The officers include former Lieutenant Michael Lohman, former Detective Jeffrey Lehrmann, and former Officers Michael Hunter, Robert Barrios and Ignatius Hills, all of whom testified during the trial.

This case was investigated by the FBI’s New Orleans Field Office, and was prosecuted by Deputy Chief Bobbi Bernstein and Trial Attorney Cindy Chung of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, along with Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore Carter of the Eastern District of Louisiana.

The Big Picture
by Glynn Wilson

Ahh, too bad. Woke up this morning and the world is still here, along with the six billion people who populate the planet.

Did you notice anyone you know missing?

Guess the so-called “Rapture” did not happen after all on Saturday. So much for the blatherings of Christian engineers.

Harold Camping, an 89-year-old retired civil engineer who has built a multi-million-dollar Christian media empire that publicized his apocalyptic prediction, was wrong again, just as he was wrong in 1994, when he says his earlier prediction didn’t come true because of a “mathematical error.”

Right.

Isn’t it amazing that the people who swear by a 2,000-year-old book never seem to have actually read it, especially the part where Jesus supposedly said something like: “No man can knoweth the hour of the Son’s return. He will come like a thief in the night.”

But that didn’t stop Camping from capitalizing on the message on Family Radio International, where his doomsday message was broadcast in 61 languages.

About 200 million Christians were supposed to start disappearing into the sky at 6 p.m. in the each time zone around the globe, and those “left behind” were all to die in a series of scourges visiting Earth until the planet was consumed by a fireball on Oct. 21.

In an indication of what this was really all about, as Saturday approached, followers reported that donations grew, allowing Family Radio to spend millions on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 RVs plastered with the doomsday message. In 2009, the nonprofit reported in IRS filings that it received $18.3 million in donations, and had assets of more than $104 million, including $34 million in stocks or other publicly traded securities, according to the Associated Press.

I’ve studied way too much science in my time to spend much effort dealing with the blatherings of the religious, but this story illustrates something worth pointing out in the interest of connecting the dots.

Even if you believe there is a god, and that he created man in his own image, a bare minimum of study of human nature should reveal that it is all about the money.

For those who have an ear let them hear this. Anyone who tells you the world is going to end on a specific day is not just a false profit. He is a money-grubbing son-of-a bitch. Don’t send him one red cent.

Anyone who falls for this capitalist joke is a fool, even as the Bible itself defines such a thing.

That said, with all the major disasters we have seen around the globe over the past few months, from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan to the tornadoes in Alabama, it does appear that we are heading for a human apocalypse on Planet Earth.

We will hear all about this for the next year, because of the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Don’t believe a word of it. The Mayans were no smarter than Harold Camping. Their society collapsed and they disappeared from the planet because they worshiped false gods by committing human sacrifices — and dumping the bodies into their only source of fresh drinking water.

The apocalypse we face is our own fault. It is not an act of god.

The science shows overwhelmingly that rising global temperatures caused by human industrial activities, mainly the burning of the fossil fuels coal and oil to generate electric power, is already causing ice to melt at the poles, sea levels to rise, and violent storms to become even more violent.

For any skeptics out there, let me point out one indisputable fact. Just take a look at one worst case scenario that unfolded before our very eyes just six years ago here in the American South. Have we already forgotten Hurricane Katrina?

What made Katrina the “perfect storm” was the heat of the water in the Gulf of Mexico, which drives the power of hurricane winds. If the planet were a degree or two cooler, Katrina might have slowed down as it approached landfall and veered off its path toward New Orleans as many hurricanes have done in the past.

So until we get a grip on the facts about our flawed energy policy in the United States, where we use far more power than any other country and generate more electricity and waste, we will continue to witness disasters that appear to be of Biblical proportions.

Somehow I don’t think those prophets from 2,000 years ago were predicting these things because of their heavenly inevitability. I suspect they had already learned a thing or two about human nature. They were trying to warn people not just to repent of their sins, but to change their ways.

Perhaps if Camping had done that, he might have been worth listening to. Otherwise, he is just another capitalist pig who can fool some of the people into sending him money.

Will you be fooled again? Are you still going to vote for the Republicans who block every effort to form intelligent public policy on energy? Shame on you. Maybe you are going to hell.

Part 2

We report. You decide.

We caught up with Aaron Viles with the Gulf Restoration Network in New Orleans the other day and filmed this update with the latest information on the BP oil drilling disaster as well as a factual briefing on the Mississippi River, Louisiana wetlands and some of the best thinking on what needs to be done about America’s clean energy needs.

The city of New Orleans suffered one of the worst disasters in U.S. history when Hurricane Katrina flooded the city in 2005. Then when the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010, the people felt like the city was back. But seven weeks later, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up in the Gulf of Mexico.

An Interview with
photographer David Rae Morris
by Glynn Wilson
LocustFork.Net