Two NOPD Officers Charged in Post-Katrina Death

by Sabrina Shankman, ProPublica
September 30, 2010 
http://www.propublica.org/nola/story/two-nopd-officers-charged-in-post-katrina-death/

A federal grand jury indicted two New Orleans police
officers today for lying and obstruction of justice in
connection with the shooting death of Danny Brumfield
Sr., a 45-year-old man shot in the back by police in
the days after Katrina.

Police said they fired a single blast from a shotgun at
Brumfield after he jumped on the hood of their squad
car and made a lunging motion with a "shiny object"
through the passenger window. According to the police
version, a pair of scissors was found near where
Brumfield fell to the ground. The presence of the
"shiny object" and the threatening manner with which it
was wielded, gave the officers justification to shoot,
an NOPD investigation into the shooting found.

But in today's indictments, the grand jury said the
officers had perjured themselves when they testified
about the shooting in a 2007 civil lawsuit brought by
the widow of Brumfield, and that Brumfield had been
waving his hands -- not an object -- at the officers
immediately before the shooting occurred.

According to the six-count indictment, Brumfield was
attempting to flag down the police and then "either
jumped on the hood of the car or was hit by the car and
landed on the hood."

Officer Ronald Mitchell offered the official version
when he testified in 2007 about the shooting. But the
indictment said he "well knew" that Brumfield did not
"jump off of the hood of a patrol car and lunge at him
with a shiny object."

The indictment said that Officer Ray Jones lied under
oath in 2007 when he testified that the officers
stopped the car to assess the condition of the wounded
man. Jones "well knew" that this did not occur.

The grand jury heard testimony from Kevin Diel, a
former New Orleans police officer who said that when he
arrived upon the scene on Sept. 3, 2005, he was told by
colleagues that Brumfield had been wielding a gun.

"They told us, you know, the guy jumped on the hood of
the car, tried to shoot the passenger, the officer that
was sitting in the passenger seat," Diel said in an
interview conducted as part of an investigation by
ProPublica, the PBS program Frontline and the New
Orleans Times-Picayune.

"They said that he had pointed a chromed revolver at
him through the window, after jumping on the hood, and
the passenger officer had fired a single shot from a
shotgun and shot and killed him," Diel said.

Then an officer in NOPD's second district, Diel was
assigned to the Convention Center on the night that
Brumfield was killed. Thousands of displaced New
Orleans residents swarmed outside the Convention Center
on Sept. 3, 2005 -- just five days after Hurricane
Katrina hit.

Diel said he noticed several NOPD cars leaving as his
unit arrived, just after dark. But beside that, he
said, it was fairly quiet. The crowd was less angry,
less chaotic than he imagined it would be, given the
conditions.

"It absolutely was not some crazy mob of people," Diel
said he told the grand jury. "They were obviously
irritated, but overall it was not a threatening
crowd... We felt safe enough that we were taking turns
taking naps on the hood of our patrol car in the
crowd."

Diel's account of the mood of the crowd contradicts the
official version in which officers Jones and Mitchell
said the crowd was unruly, they were being shot at, and
had to immediately retreat to a safer area.

The killing of Danny Brumfield is one of at least nine
investigations that the federal Department of Justice
has opened into the New Orleans Police Department, the
majority of which focus on the days immediately after
Katrina.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten would not say he chose to
focus on perjury and obstruction of justice rather than
the officers' actions in shooting Brumfield. "The
indictment that we sought and received is driven by the
evidence that we have in the case," Letten said.

The 2007 lawsuit, brought by Brumfield's wife, resulted
in an out-of-court settlement of $400,000 settlement,
which was paid out by the city in 2008. Because the
case never went to trial, neither the officers'
testimony nor the details of the subsequent NOPD
investigation were made public.

One aspect of the lawsuit that was made public,
however, was that NOPD homicide detective DeCynda
Barnes had neglected to look at Brumfield's autopsy
when she was conducting her follow-up investigation
into the shooting. In her report, she wrote that
Brumfield had been shot in the shoulder, when in fact
he was shot in the back.

Attorney Eric Hessler, who represents Officer Jones,
previously dismissed Diel's account as rumor. He could
not be reached for comment today. Officer Mitchell's
lawyer, Kerry Cuccia, said he had no comment.

_____________________________________________

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