{"id":316676,"date":"2010-02-13T15:01:02","date_gmt":"2010-02-13T20:01:02","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.southernstudies.org,2010:\/\/5.12140"},"modified":"2010-02-19T11:22:50","modified_gmt":"2010-02-19T16:22:50","slug":"new-orleans-police-officer-under-investigation-in-shooting-in-days-after-katrina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/316676","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans police officer under investigation in shooting in days after Katrina"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"glover_tanner_burnt_car_propublica.jpg\"<\/a><\/span>By Brendan McCarthy and Laura Maggi, Times-Picayune with additional reporting by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/i>A rookie New Orleans police officer who had been on the force for just a year is under investigation in the shooting of Henry Glover<\/a> outside an Algiers strip mall four days after Hurricane Katrina, the first act in a bizarre chain of events that has led to a massive federal probe into the city’s Police Departmen<\/a>t.<\/p>\n

Glover’s
\nburned remains were found weeks after the August 2005 storm inside an
\nabandoned, nearly incinerated car on the Algiers levee<\/p>\n

During the past year, the U.S. Department of Justice has interviewed scores of officers in an effort to determine how the 31-year-old Glover died<\/a>, as well as whether officers may have tried to cover up his death.<\/p>\n

William Tanner, an Algiers man, has described his effort to get
\nmedical treatment from police for Glover’s gunshot wound. Tanner has
\nalleged that a group of officers from the SWAT unit detained and beat
\nhim and two other men, refused medical care for Glover, and eventually
\ndrove off in Tanner’s car, with Glover’s body inside.<\/p>\n

But it was
\nnever known who had shot Glover. Now, several sources and a defense
\nattorney confirm that federal investigators believe that then-NOPD
\nofficer David Warren shot Glover. <\/p>\n

It’s unclear if Warren’s
\nbullet killed Glover. It’s also unclear whether another group of
\nofficers under investigation for setting the car on fire–including two
\nleaders of the NOPD’s high-profile SWAT unit, Capt. Jeff Winn and Lt.
\nDwayne Scheuermann–knew that Glover had been possibly shot by a fellow
\ncop. <\/p>\n

What is clear is that the shooting was the first in a
\nstring of questionable actions by NOPD officers now at the center of a
\nsprawling probe.<\/p>\n

Rookie reassigned in days after Katrina<\/strong><\/p>\n

Warren,
\n47, was a rookie on the force assigned to the 7th District in eastern
\nNew Orleans when the storm struck. He was unable to get to his post and
\nwas directed to the 4th District in Algiers, according to his attorney,
\nJoseph Albe. <\/p>\n

On Friday, Sept. 2, 2005–four days into the
\nflood–Warren and his patrol partner encountered two men behind a Chuck
\nE. Cheese’s restaurant near the intersection of Seine Drive and Texas
\nDrive, Albe said.<\/p>\n

Glover was at that location that afternoon with a friend when he was shot, according to family members.<\/p>\n

Warren,
\nin uniform, saw two men ge out of a truck and “charge” toward a
\nbusiness, Albe said. Warren believed they were going to loot the
\nbusiness.<\/p>\n

“He yelled stop, halt, whatever,” Albe said. “They didn’t.”<\/p>\n

Warren, an expert marksman, pulled the trigger on his rifle. A shot rang out.<\/p>\n

“After he fired, the guys turned around and ran off,” Albe said.<\/p>\n

Warren, who Albe said doesn’t know exactly where the bullet landed, then called ranking officers and reported the shooting. <\/p>\n

“He did exactly what he was supposed to have done,” Albe said.<\/p>\n

Though
\nthe location, the date, time and circumstances square with civilian
\naccounts, Albe maintains there is no evidence that shows Warren shot
\nGlover.<\/p>\n

“Did David Warren shoot his gun? Yes. He shot one shot. Do we know whether it was Henry Glover? No … We may never know.”<\/p>\n

Warren never wrote a report on the shooting incident.<\/p>\n

“He was told not to” by ranking officers, Albe said. “Plus, an officer involved in a shooting doesn’t write his own report.”<\/p>\n

A
\nreport written more than a week after the incident classified the
\nshooting as a “miscellaneous incident,” a designation given to minor
\nmatters that typically receive no follow-up, the attorney said.<\/p>\n

Albe
\nand other attorneys representing the officers under investigation have
\nsaid the chaotic circumstances after Katrina need to be taken into
\nconsideration when judging officers’ actions.<\/p>\n

“It wasn’t ‘protect and serve,'” Albe said Friday. “It was protect themselves. It was a question of survival.”<\/strong><\/p>\n

An unconventional officer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Warren is no longer with the NOPD. He joined the department as a
\nrecruit in December 2003 and was sworn in as an officer in May 2004. He
\nleft the force in 2008, according to civil service records. <\/p>\n

He
\nwas an unconventional rookie: He joined the force mid-career and holds
\nseveral degrees, including a master’s of business administration degree
\nfrom the University of Wisconsin, according to his personnel file. <\/p>\n

His
\nresume also states he has worked in the armed services, and
\nparticipated in “use of force and threat assessment” training at the
\nLethal Force Institute Inc. At the NOPD’s graduation for his recruit
\nclass, Warren was honored with a precision shooting award for having
\nthe highest cumulative score during firearms training.<\/p>\n

Civilian witnesses have already given their version of the events of Sept 2, 2005, to federal agents. <\/p>\n

Glover’s fiancee, Rolanda Short, said last fall that Glover had gone
\nout that morning to scavenge for supplies. After Katrina, with no
\nstores open, he had been in charge of getting food, water and charcoal
\nfor the couple’s extended family, several of whom lived near their
\napartment on Garden Oaks Drive, she said.<\/p>\n

Short heard someone in
\nthe street shout out that Glover, who was known as “Ace,” had been
\nshot. Short said the man on the street indicated a police officer–maybe
\na state trooper–had shot the father of her young daughter.<\/p>\n

Hearing
\nthe news, Short ran out into the street and saw Glover lying face down
\non the pavement with blood pouring from his chest. Short said as she
\nheld Glover’s hand, a car pulled up and two police officers got out.
\nThey ordered Short to back away from her fiance, but she refused.
\nEventually they left, said Short, who was interviewed by FBI agents
\nlast year. <\/p>\n

At that point, a potential savior appeared, Short
\nrecalled. Tanner, a maintenance man on a quest for gasoline for his
\ncar, stopped his white Chevrolet Malibu at the behest of Glover’s
\nbrother, Edward King. Though he didn’t know Glover, Tanner agreed to
\ntry to help.

A search for help<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tanner decided that driving several miles to West Jefferson Medical
\nCenter, the original plan, was a bad idea. With Glover in the car’s
\nback seat, and the injured man’s brother and another man in the car,
\nTanner drove to a nearby school where the NOPD’s SWAT unit had set up
\ncamp during the storm. <\/p>\n

Instead of helping them, Tanner alleges
\nthat SWAT team members at Paul B. Habans Elementary School handcuffed
\nthe three uninjured men, interrogating them about what they were doing.<\/p>\n

The
\nofficers jumped to the conclusion that the men were looters, and beat
\nthem, with officers kicking Tanner in the ribs, and one officer hitting
\nhim in the head with the butt of a gun, Tanner said.<\/p>\n

Officers did not tend to Glover, who lay wounded–or possibly dead–in the back seat of the car, Tanner said. <\/p>\n

At
\none point, an officer in a tactical uniform took Tanner’s key chain,
\nremoved the key to his car and headed toward his Malibu, with flares
\nsticking out of the front pocket of his cargo pants, Tanner recalled.
\nThe officer took off in the car, following other officers who were in a
\nwhite truck, he said. Glover was still in the back seat of the car.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Tanner and the other men were released. They fled the city. <\/p>\n

Scorched bone fragments recovered<\/strong><\/p>\n

Soldiers from the Army’s 82nd Airborne recovered Glover’s remains,
\nmostly scorched bone fragments with “minute fragments of metal,” from
\ninside Tanner’s charred car, which had been left beside the levee near
\nPatterson Drive and Gen. Collins Avenue. The site was blocks away from
\nthe NOPD’s 4th District station and a U.S. Border Patrol office, about
\na mile and a half away from the elementary school where SWAT encamped.<\/p>\n

Coroner
\nFrank Minyard said DNA from family members helped confirm Glover’s
\nidentity. The autopsy shows Minyard did not classify the death as a
\nhomicide or flag it for police investigation.<\/p>\n

Minyard’s inaction in classifying the death a homicide is one reason police didn’t begin an investigation, Albe said.<\/p>\n

Six
\ndays after Glover’s shooting, a pair of volunteer first responders from
\nthe Pittsburgh area, armed with a video camera, stumbled upon the
\nvehicle. The two men videotaped what they found inside: a skull with
\ntwo holes in it, according to a Pittsburgh television news report.<\/p>\n

The
\nskull went missing sometime between the pair’s discovery and when the
\n82nd Airborne recovered the remains. No skull is mentioned in Glover’s autopsy<\/a>, which consisted of an examination of five biohazard bags containing bones and clumps of flesh.<\/p>\n

Tanner
\nlearned about the location of his vehicle months after the storm from
\nan agent with the federal Immigration Customs and Enforcement agency.
\nThe car remained on the levee through early February 2009. A neighbor
\nsaid it was towed away by an NOPD truck a month later.<\/p>\n

Although
\nTanner made several appeals to the NOPD in the time since Katrina to
\nfind out what happened to his car, he never got anywhere.<\/p>\n

Two veteran cops also under investigation<\/strong><\/p>\n

Two veteran officers, both highly decorated, are under investigation
\nby federal authorities for playing possible roles in the disposal of
\nGlover’s body. Winn and Scheuermann of the SWAT team are two targets of
\nthe investigation, Eric Hessler, an attorney representing Winn, has
\npreviously said.<\/p>\n

Winn, a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq,
\nand Scheuermann are widely respected in the department. They have
\nworked in the some of the NOPD’s most proactive and dangerous units,
\nvolunteering for harrowing assignments time and again. The SWAT team
\nresponded to numerous reports of violence in the city immediately after
\nthe storm. <\/p>\n

Hessler has defended his client in interviews,
\nsaying Winn and the officers he commanded were the ones who stepped up
\nduring the chaos after Katrina.<\/p>\n

“Jeff Winn addressed everything
\nproperly by the guidelines the NOPD was working under during Katrina,”
\nHessler said Friday. “By all accounts, he did a great job.”<\/p>\n

Tanner’s account of what happened to Glover first appeared in a 2008 article published in The Nation magazine and on the Web site of ProPublica<\/a>,
\nan investigative newsroom. Despite repeated inquiries by Tanner about
\nwhat happened to his car, the New Orleans Police Department had not
\npreviously opened an investigation into Glover’s death or the
\nincineration of his corpse.<\/p>\n

The story prompted a federal inquiry.
\nSince then, dozens of officers, including the current and former
\nsuperintendents, as well as other top brass, have appeared before a
\nfederal grand jury. The U.S. Department of Justice, working with the
\nlocal FBI office and the U.S. attorney’s office, has issued countless
\nsubpoenas to the NOPD, and interviewed several officers.<\/p>\n

The
\nfederal investigation into Glover’s death is one of several active
\nprobes into the NOPD. A grand jury examining the well-publicized Danziger Bridge shooting<\/a>–in
\nwhich two men were killed by police and four others were shot–commenced
\nlast spring. The FBI also has an open investigation into the fatal
\npolice shooting death of Adolph Grimes <\/a>III, 22, who was killed in an encounter with officers on New Year’s Day 2009.<\/p>\n

(F<\/i>or additional documents about this case, visit ProPublica’s website<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Brendan McCarthy and Laura Maggi, Times-Picayune with additional reporting by A.C. Thompson, ProPublica A rookie New Orleans police officer who had been on the force for just a year is under investigation in the shooting of Henry Glover outside an Algiers strip mall four days after Hurricane Katrina, the first act in a bizarre […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5733,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-316676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316676\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}