Mayor: New Orleans settles police shooting suits for $13M

NEW ORLEANS — The mayor of New Orleans on Monday announced the city has reached settlements totaling $13.3 million in lawsuits over deadly police shootings after Hurricane Katrina and a fatal beating just before the 2005 storm, and he apologized to the victims’ families on behalf of the city.

“I am hoping that in some sense the strength of these families will help the city find peace in our future,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at a news conference.

Landrieu said the settlements are with 17 plaintiffs.

Sherrel Johnson, the mother of 17-year-old James Brissette, who died in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings on the Danziger Bridge, was among the victims’ relatives on hand for Landrieu’s announcement. She said she “wholeheartedly” accepts his apology.

“Since that time, it has been an awful long and rough road. But me and my family got through it,” she said.

Later, she added, “Now this is closure for me and I can go forward because I know the old New Orleans does not exist anymore.”

A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged in a series of Justice Department civil rights investigations after the August 2005 storm.

All but one of the cases centered on alleged police misconduct during the chaos that gripped the flooded city.

Eleven officers pleaded guilty to charges related to deadly shootings on a bridge less than a week after Katrina’s landfall.

Officers shot and killed two unarmed people and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge before engaging in a cover-up that included a planted gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports.