FromWWL

A grand jury has
declined to bring criminal charges against anyone in the 2005 police
blockade that kept hundreds from crossing the Mississippi River to
safety after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans, the district
attorney’s office said Wednesday.

Several
hundred people claimed police from suburban Gretna prevented them from
crossing as they tried to flee New Orleans on Sept. 1, three days after
the storm hit and floodwaters inundated the city. One officer, Lawrence
Vaughn, allegedly fired a shot during the confrontation.

But a New Orleans grand jury on Wednesday declined to indict Vaughn on
a criminal charge, said Dalton Savwoir, a spokesman for District
Attorney Eddie Jordan.

From theTimes Picayune:

Vaughn, who for years has been assigned to a security detail at the
Jefferson Parish courthouse in Gretna, fired the gun only after people
threatened to throw him and another officer off the bridge if they did
not let pedestrians pass, sources have said.

“He is the only person in question who discharged a weapon that day,” Sept. 1, 2005, Savwoir said.

SNIP

Attempts by The Times-Picayune and the American Civil Liberties Union’s
Louisiana branch to get the investigative reports were unsuccessful.

You may recall theaccount from 2 paramedics who had been in NOLA for a convention and were on the bridge:

Lorrie Beth Slonsky
and Larry Bradshaw heard shots as they trudged up the incline to the
Greater New Orleans Bridge, but the San Francisco paramedics had grown
accustomed to the sound of guns during the three days they’d been stuck
in the flooded city.

Suddenly the crowd ahead of them began to scatter, shouting that cops up ahead were shooting at them.

Bradshaw,
assuming there was some misunderstanding, held up his paramedic badge
and made his way to the line of officers at the foot of the bridge. He
explained that the hordes of people were just trying to evacuate and
they’d heard that buses were waiting across the bridge, in the suburb
of Gretna.

The
officers, their guns poised, told them that pedestrians weren’t allowed
across. In Slonsky and Bradshaw’s recollection, the police said “This
is not New Orleans,” and “We’re not having any Superdomes down here.”
As they retreated, the cops fired shots over their heads.

Lawsuits are pending yet in the matter though. From the TP article:

Of the lawsuits, one seeks class-action certification. Another, filed
by New Orleans residents Tracy and Dorothy Dickerson, is set for trial
on Jan. 20 before U.S. District Court Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon, who
is presiding over all four lawsuits filed in federal court.

UPDATE: The Times Picayune (actually nola.com which is the “exclusive online content provider of The Times-Picayune”) needs to revisit allowing comments to their articles. The racist crap I read in their comment sections time and time again is an embarrassment to the paper and the people of New Orleans.