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	Workers Vanguard No. 1031	4 October 2013

Katrina Racist Nightmare Lives On

Danziger Bridge Killer Cops Get New Trial

On September 17, a federal court granted a new trial to five New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) officers incarcerated for their role in one of the most notorious killings by cops in recent memory: the shootings at Danziger Bridge in September 2005, a few days after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt, who presided over the original 2011 trial, opens a pathway for the convicted killers and a key accomplice in the subsequent cover-up to walk out of prison while awaiting another trial—if federal prosecutors decide to pursue a new trial at all. The five are serving terms ranging from six to 65 years. Coming just two months after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the coldblooded killing of Trayvon Martin, the federal court decision is another reminder of just how cheap black life is in this racist capitalist society.

The incident at Danziger Bridge is emblematic of the nightmare for New Orleans’ black and poor population that unfolded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. As city officials ranted against mythical black looters and rapists, cops and white vigilantes were given the green light to go on a killing spree. Black Democratic mayor Ray Nagin directed the NOPD’s second-in-command to “stop search and rescue and bring our force back to controlling the streets.” The Times-Picayune (12 December 2009) reported that “in the week after Katrina, New Orleans police killed and wounded as many people as they do in a typical year.” Among them were two killed and four wounded at Danziger Bridge.

At 9 a.m. on 4 September 2005, a truckload of officers raced to the bridge in response to a police call that falsely reported people shooting at cops near the Industrial Canal. Jumping from their vehicle, the cops opened fire, including with AK-47s, on clusters of unarmed people crossing the bridge in a desperate search for food and water. Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old severely disabled man, was killed by a blast in the back of the head from a shotgun fired at close range by Robert Faulcon, the only black cop among the crew. Madison’s brother Lance was then arrested on frame-up charges of shooting at the cops. Seventeen-year-old James Brissette was also killed, and four members of a family accompanying him were gravely injured. At the trial, several officers taking the stand as part of plea bargains testified to the ensuing cover-up, which included fabricated witnesses, a planted gun and falsified reports.

Engelhardt’s ruling did not contest these facts but rather cited prosecutorial misconduct. Specifically, he contended that anonymous postings (some disparaging the police) on the Web site NOLA.com by individuals associated with the prosecution had created a “prejudicial, poisonous atmosphere” requiring a new trial. As a Washington Post (21 September) editorial noted, “By that logic, overturning the convictions might also be justified by the TV show ‘Treme’ which...depicts the New Orleans police as corrupt, brutal and violent.” The fact is that the whole world saw the venality and brutality of the thugs in blue in daily news broadcasts at the time.

What happened at Danziger Bridge was an especially depraved expression of the murderous racist violence meted out daily by police in upholding the American capitalist order. Three days before Engelhardt’s decision, police in Charlotte, North Carolina, gunned down Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old former Florida A&M football player. Ferrell had recently moved to the city to join his fiancée and was working two jobs and preparing to go back to school. When his car ran off the road in the early morning, he crawled out of the back window and sought help at the first house he found. A woman who opened the door shut it quickly and called the police. Moments after they arrived, Ferrell lay dead, hit by ten bullets. The next day, Randall Kerrick was arraigned on voluntary manslaughter charges, the first time in 30 years that a Charlotte cop was charged for an on-duty shooting. In the rare instances of such cases going to trial, the courts almost always let cops off on the grounds that they were just “doing their job.”

Hurricane Katrina provided dramatic evidence of a ruling class that could not care less whether the impoverished black masses live or die. Many people recall with horror the images of thousands of desperate survivors begging for help from rooftops and bodies floating by on floodwaters. Dying victims, packed into the sweltering Superdome, lacked food, water and medicine. Another measure of the rulers’ racist contempt and class arrogance is that there is still no final casualty count for the hurricane. Officially, the death toll directly attributable to the storm is around 1,800 for Louisiana and Mississippi, with a majority of the victims black. However, hundreds are still missing, with many bodies unclaimed or unidentified.

In the first six months of 2006, there were over 2,300 more deaths than usual in the New Orleans area, in part due to a skyrocketing suicide rate. Meanwhile, the capitalist class sought to whiten the city’s face, taking advantage of the catastrophe to raze public housing, shut down schools, especially in black areas, and bust city unions. In 2007, the Director of the New Orleans Health Department reported that there were 75 percent fewer hospital beds and 70 percent fewer doctors in black areas of the city, which had already suffered from grossly inadequate health care before the storm.

Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster. But the social disaster that followed was man-made, a product of the racial oppression that is built into the American capitalist system. First enslaved, then forcibly segregated, marginalized and imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands, the black population remains an oppressed race-color caste. But they are not powerless. As an integral component of the proletariat, doubly oppressed black workers will be at the forefront of the socialist revolution that will sweep away murderous racist capitalism and its police enforcers.