| Jarvis DeBerry
Why it's so hard to trust the police
Friday, September 15, 2006
Jarvis DeBerry
When New Orleans officials convene Saturday to talk about the city's
stubborn crime problem, they'd do well to include a discussion about
how little trust the public has for the New Orleans Police Department.
While everybody may know of individual officers whose integrity
and dedication are beyond reproach, the fact remains that the department
can -- and often does -- inspire fear in law-abiding citizens. Who
among us can't tick off multiple examples of officers victimizing
the public?
You name it: murder, aggravated rape, extortion, aggravated kidnapping,
conspiracy to rob a bank, and somebody on the force has been booked
with it. And that's not to mention the all-too common reports of
harassment and brutality.
That reputation for thuggery can have a chilling effect on the
public's willingness to cooperate with authorities. And until the
public's trust increases, the department will get far less crime-fighting
help from the community than it demands.
We should all be able to trust that our police officers are honest
and capable of distinguishing criminals from everybody else. But
the official account of the shootings on the Danziger Bridge Sept.
4, 2005, leaves one with the sick feeling that officers fatally
mistook innocent civilians for gunmen and later tailored their reports
to justify their actions.
The Sunday morning following Hurricane Katrina a police officer
radioed that two officers had been shot at the bridge. The report
was false. But the seven officers who commandeered a rental truck
didn't know that. Reportedly there were people shooting guns on
the bridge when they arrived. So those officers spilled out of the
rental truck and fired back. But at whom?
Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man who according to his family had
the mind of a child, was shot seven times in his back and killed.
Lance Madison, Ronald's big brother and protector, was booked with
attempting to murder each of the seven officers who got off the
truck.
Not a single officer was injured; nonetheless, officers appear
to have killed two people and injured four.
No one from NOPD reported seeing Lance Madison, a 25-year employee
of Federal Express with a spotless record, firing a gun. Court records
indicate that the only person making the allegation was David Ryder,
a shadowy figure who, despite a felony conviction and a couple other
arrests, was claiming to be a St. Landry Parish sheriff's deputy.
Nobody recovered a weapon from Lance Madison. According to Officer
Ignatius Hills' handwritten report, the 49-year-old Lance Madison
"fled and threw his handgun into the Industrial Canal and was
apprehended a short time later." However, Sgt. Arthur Kaufman
testified at a preliminary hearing in September that he later added
that part to Hills' report based on what another officer told him.
Lance Madison agrees that there were people on the bridge shooting,
but he said that the gunmen were teenagers who were shooting in
the direction of him and his brother. The brothers were running
away from those criminals, he said, when the cops arrived and fired
upon them, as if they were the bad guys.
By all accounts, the scene on the bridge was chaotic, but chaos
often accompanies criminality. That's no excuse for officers not
being careful. Even if their adrenaline was furiously pumping because
they believed two officers had been shot, that doesn't grant them
a shoot-at-everybody-in-sight pass.
This department frightens me. If Police Superintendent Warren Riley
-- who had yet to take the helm at the time of those shootings --
is serious about increasing public cooperation he'll acknowledge
that his officers frighten many others, too.
We want to trust the police. But they have quite a ways to go before
they earn it.
Jarvis DeBerry is an editorial writer. He can be reached at (504)
826-3355 or at jdeberry@timespicayune.com. |
