Former New Orleans police detective pleads guilty in Katrina shooting cover-up

By A.C. Thompson, ProPublica

Former New Orleans Police Department Lt. Michael Lohman pleadedguilty to a single count of conspiring to obstruct justice, inconnection with one of a string of violent encounters between policeand civilians in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Policeshot at least 10 people during the week after the storm made landfall.(We have been investigating the shootings, along with our partners the New Orleans Times-Picayune and PBS "Frontline.")

Lohman's guilty plea stems from the so-called Danziger Bridge incidentof Sept. 4, 2005. Responding to an emergency call that day, New Orleanspolice officers shot six citizens -- killing two -- on and around the span.

The Times-Picayune has been covering the Danziger Bridge shootings from the start and it has the latest.

Lohman helped orchestrate the police's investigation of theshooting, a probe portrayed in the bill of information as an attemptedcover-up. The former lieutenant was involved in planting a handgun atthe scene, drafted phony police reports, and lied to federal agents,according the court document. (The New York Times has good details on the alleged cover-up. And we at ProPublica have posted the bill of information in our easy-to-read document viewer.)

Lohman's plea is the clearest indicator yet that the federalgovernment -- which for more than a year now has been investigating theNew Orleans Police Department's actions in the aftermath of HurricaneKatrina -- is mounting a two-pronged probe: federal prosecutors and theFBI are scrutinizing incidents in which police shot civilians in thechaotic days after the storm, as well as the alleged efforts of otherofficers to cover-up those shootings. 

Defense attorneys familiar with the widening federal probe say the Justice Department is looking at the death of Henry Glover as a possible cover-up, as well. Glover was shot on Sept. 2, 2005 -- possibly by NOPD officer David Warren -- anddied, according to three witnesses, at a makeshift police compound inthe Algiers section of New Orleans. His charred remains were laterdiscovered in an incinerated car dumped on a Mississippi River levee.

Federal agents began examining Glover's death after ProPublica, in conjunction with The Nation magazine, reported on the case in late 2008.

In recent weeks, the Justice Department has begun looking at three other post-Katrina incidents -- the shootings of Danny Brumfield, Matthew McDonald and Keenon McCann,all of whom were shot by NOPD officers in the week after the hurricanemade landfall. Brumfield and McDonald died; McCann was injured butsurvived to file a lawsuit against the police department. He was shotto death by an unknown assailant in 2008 while the suit was pending.

The NOPD, like most police departments, conducts an investigation everytime an officer opens fire on a citizen -- the goal is to make sure theshooting was proper and justified. As a general rule, officers areallowed to use deadly force only when confronted by a person posing aphysical threat, either to the officer or another civilian.

However, a joint effort by reporters with ProPublica, the New Orleans Times-Picayuneand PBS "Frontline" found that NOPD investigators did little todetermine whether officers acted appropriately when they shotBrumfield, McDonald and McCann. NOPD detectives collected littlephysical evidence, spoke to few civilian witnesses, and conducted briefinterviews -- ranging from seven to 12 minutes -- with the officers involvedin the shootings.