Jury convicts 5 officers in Katrina shootings
Charges stem from the cover-up of the slayings on a New Orleans bridge
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN 
NEW ORLEANS — A federal jury convicted five current or former police officers Friday of civil rights violations in the deadly shootings on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina, but decided they were not guilty of murder.
All five officers were convicted Friday 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. However, the jury decided that neither fatal shooting was a murder.
Prosecutors said police shot six unarmed people, killing two, on the Danziger Bridge less than a week after the 2005 storm. Officers also were charged with participating in a cover-up to make the shootings appear justified.
Defense attorneys said the officers were shot at before they returned fire and acted reasonably in the face of a deadly threat.
Jurors decided the fate of former officer Robert Faulcon, Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and retired Sgt. Arthur Kaufman. Faulcon, Gisevius, Bowen and Villavaso were charged in the shootings and with taking part in the alleged cover-up. Kaufman, who investigated the shootings, was charged only in the alleged cover-up.
The trial was a high-profile test of the Justice Department's effort to clean up a police department marred by a reputation for corruption and brutality. A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes. Most of the cases center on actions during the aftermath of the Aug. 29, 2005, storm, which plunged the flooded city into a state of lawlessness and desperation.
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