{"id":8918,"date":"2011-08-08T15:34:25","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T19:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=8918"},"modified":"2011-08-08T14:38:41","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T18:38:41","slug":"jury-convicts-5-officers-in-post-katrina-shootings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/?p=8918","title":{"rendered":"Jury Convicts  5 Officers In Post-Katrina Shootings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>NEW ORLEANS<\/strong> &#8212; A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.<br \/>\nAll five officers were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. The four who had been charged with civil rights violations in the shootings were convicted on all counts.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors contended during the five-week federal trial that officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning, killing two and wounding four others on Sept. 4, 2005, then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.<\/p>\n<p>Defense attorneys countered that the officers were returning fire and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to another officer&#8217;s distress call less than a week after Katrina struck.<\/p>\n<p>Convicted were former officer <strong>Robert Faulcon<\/strong>, <strong>Sgts. Robert Gisevius<\/strong> and <strong>Kenneth Bowen<\/strong>, <strong>Officer Anthony Villavaso<\/strong> and retired <strong>Sgt. Arthur Kaufman<\/strong>. <strong>Faulcon<\/strong>, <strong>Gisevius<\/strong>, <strong>Bowen<\/strong> and <strong>Villavaso<\/strong> were convicted in the shootings and with taking part in the alleged cover-up.<strong> Kaufman<\/strong>, who investigated the shootings, was charged only in the alleged cover-up.<\/p>\n<p>The trial was a high-profile test of the Justice Department&#8217;s effort to clean up a police department marred by a reputation for corruption and brutality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW ORLEANS &#8212; A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina. All five officers were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. The four who had been charged with civil rights violations in the shootings were [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}