Posted on 01/25/2006 3:51:58 PM PST by Brian Mosely
A Louisiana grand jury will investigate several controversies involving police in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, including the theft of cars from a Cadillac dealership and the shooting deaths of two men suspected of firing on contractors.
The grand jury will be the first impaneled here since Hurricane Katrina hit on Aug. 29. District Attorney Eddie Jordan, whose offices were flooded in the storm, announced the investigations Wednesday from his temporary headquarters in a former nightclub.
More than 200 vehicles _ including 88 new Cadillacs and Chevrolets _ were taken from a dealership amid the chaos after the hurricane hit. New Orleans police have acknowledged that some of the cars were taken by officers to replace flooded police cars.
In October, two civilians were arrested in the case and on Friday a federal grand jury indicted a former officer on charges of stealing a pickup truck from the dealership.
The police shooting case has been surrounded by confusion. On Sept. 4, police said five people were shot to death by officers after opening fire on a group of contractors on a bridge in New Orleans. But the number was later revised down to two, and questions have been raised about whether those killed were involved in any wrongdoing.
The grand jury also will look at evidence in a case involving a police chief and police officer from the small town of Mermentau who were accused of looting after Katrina. And it will examine allegations of possible malfeasance involving a Port of New Orleans official who dismissed about 60 port security officers who could have helped protect a mall and taken part in rescue efforts.
Jordan said the grand jury will probably also look into the deaths of patients at hospitals during Katrina and investigate whether the levees and floodwalls that broke were improperly built.
Glad to see the engine of justice is up and running in New Orleans
The real question is in whether or not the Grand Jury actually exists....
Nagin, have you heard the stories about Angola? My uncle use to be Warden there in the 70s they ain't funny.
He's also the prosecutor that walked into his office and said basically, 'All you white people are fired.' He was successfully sued for about $2M.
Edwin Edwards is living the good life compared to one of his predecessors, Dick Leche, a late 1930s governor who wound up wearing stripes and cutting sugar cane in Angola, at least according to a photo printed in Life magazine.
Not a sign of all those non-existant police officers who, nevertheless, received paychecks all those years?
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1966/5/1966_5_40.shtml
The Long Long trail
Leche was found to have had an income of $282,000 in 1938 on a governor’s salary of $7,500. The state had been constructing buildings and paying for them twice, a practice called the “double-dip.” James Monroe Smith, the President of L.S.U., had been secretly printing state bonds to cover his wild stock speculations. Governor Leche was given ten years in the federal penitentiary; the Democratic national committeeman, four years; “Doc” Smith, two and a half.
And in the wake of the scandals, as Leche was marched off to jail, Lieutenant Governor Earl Long became the new governor of Louisiana.
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Thanks for posting this. Ever since this mess began, I have wrongly thought that it was Nagin who fired all of the white people. I had a vague memory of the story but not enough to get a "google" result. Here is the story that appeared last summer, before the storm hit. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1358072/posts He must have been so relieved to have this "distraction".
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