More details of civil rights settlements made public
9th January 2017 · 0 Comments
Responding to a public-records request by Nola.com/The Times Picayune, the City of New Orleans recently released details of a $13.3 million settlement it reached last month with victims and relatives of victims from three officer-involved incidents dating back to 2005.
One of the incidents, the beating death of 48-year-old Tremé resident Raymond Robair, occurred about a month before Hurricane Katrina. The other two incidents — the fatal shooting of 31-year-old Henry Glover and the Danziger Bridge massacre — took place less than a week after Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of New Orleans.
The $13.3 million settlement announced in December will be distributed among 17 plaintiffs from the officer-involved killings.
The Bartholomew family which sued the City of New Orleans in 2006, had five family members who crossed the Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005. All but one of them was shot by police that day.
The family received the largest share of the $13.3 million settlement, $3.25 million. Lesha and Susan Bartholomew were each shot four times by police, with Susan Bartholomew sustaining injuries that required an arm to be amputated. Leonard Bartholomew III was shot three times by police. A nephew, Jose Holmes, was shot five times, including shots to the abdomen and the jaw. Leonard Bartholomew IV was not shot.
In its lawsuit, the Bartholomew family had sought a total of $29 million with Lesha Bartholomew seeking $8.1 million; Susan Bartholomew seeking $13.75 million; and Leonard III and IV seeking $7.2 million.
Jose Holmes filed a separate lawsuit and was awarded $2.25 million. Holmes, who was lying on the ground when he was shot by police, said in his lawsuit that he had to undergo several surgeries, is permanently injured and disfigured and expects the injuries he sustained to shorten his life.
James Brissette, a 17-year-old friend of Jose Holmes, was one of two people fatally shot by police on the Danziger Bridge. Sherrell Johnson, his mother, said that it took more than a year for authorities to inform her through DNA testing that her son was deceased.
Johnson was awarded $1.4 million in last month’s settlement with the City of New Orleans.
Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally disabled man, was the other unarmed civilian killed by police on the Danziger Bridge. His brother, Lance Madison, was also on the bridge that day and was initially accused of shooting at the police but those charges were later dropped. ‘
Nola.com reported last week that the Madison family settlement had not yet been finalized.
The family of 31-year-old Henry Glover, who was shot by a policeman in the parking lot of a West Bank strip mall and whose charred remains were later found in an abandoned car on the Mississippi River levee, was awarded $1.13 million, split into two payments of $675,000 and $450,000,
Former NOPD Officer David Warren was initially convicted along with four other officers but was later granted a new trial during which he was acquitted.
The Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office has refused to indict Warren for firing the shot that led to Glover’s death.
After Glover’s remains were discovered in the burned-out car, someone removed the victim’s skull from the car and it has still not been returned to the family for proper burial.
The Glover family had reportedly sought a total of $27 million in “compensatory, punitive, general and special damages.”
Former NOPD Officer Gregory McRae, the cop who burned the car with Glover’s remains in it, is the only cop serving time in the Glover case.
The family of Raymond Robair, who was beaten to death by police about a month before Hurricane Katrina, was awarded $750,000.
After he was beaten, Robair was dropped off outside Charity Hospital. Former NOPD Officer Melvin Williams was sentenced to 21 years in jail for beating the Tremé resident with a baton and his partner, former NOPD Officer Dean Moore, was given a five-year sentence for covering up the beating.
A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office told The Louisiana Weekly in an email last fall that the City of New Orleans had already reached a settlement with the family of 20-year-old Wendell Allen, who was gunned down by police while standing shirtless and unarmed on the staircase of his Gentilly home. Another wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of Justin Sipp, was thrown out by the court, according to the spokesperson.
Justin Sipp was fatally shot by police as he headed to work at a fast-food restaurant near City Park. The victim’s brother, Earl Sipp, was shot in the leg by police during what police described as a gunfire exchange.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said last fall that he had hoped to settle the Danziger, Glover and Robair wrongful-death lawsuits by the end of 2016.
Some Black leaders sharply criticized the cash-strapped City of New Orleans for severely underpaying the victims of these high-profile police shootings.
“There are a lot of people who were killed by New Orleans police who will never get justice in the criminal justice system or in civil or federal court,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly last Thursday. “The least the City of New Orleans could have done is be fair with these families. This doesn’t feel like the City is being fair or just.
“To add insult to injury, the settlements to these families will be paid for by the people of New Orleans who are themselves victims of unconstitutional policing, racial profiling and police terror.”
“These were vicious, brutal acts of police terror and the City of New Orleans should have sent a strong message to law enforcement agencies and individual police officers that unconstitutional policing and abuse would not be tolerated,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “Instead, they took the easy way out, strong-armed these victims’ families into accepting this meager restitution for their suffering and losses and essentially told the world and the law enforcement community that Black life is still cheap in New Orleans.”
This article originally published in the January 9, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
