In what is the biggest story of the week so far, New Orleans LA police Lt Michael Lohman has plead guilty to a federal obstruction charge concerning his testimony to federal agents about his role in a cover up of the Sept 4, 2005 post-huricane Katrina officer-involved shooting incident on the Danziger bridge that left 2 dead and 4 seriously injured. Lohman was not there when the shootings took place, but instead had responded afterward to direct an investigation into the incident and he found out pretty quickly that it was a “bad shoot”… in other words, it was an unjustified shooting incident.
The factual basis document signed by Lohman goes into detailing a rather convoluted process by which he conspired not only with the officers involved in the shooting incident, but also the officers that he had assigned to investigate the shooting incident to develop a plausible false story to justify the shooting that included a planting a gun since none were found at the scene of the shooting.
The conspiracy to cover up the unjustified shooting went so far as to involve Lohman not only telling the officers to get their stories straight before being interviewed, but to also sit down with all of them to help them get their falsified stories together… and when that failed, he rewrote the entire report on his own to make it more convincing.
If anyone ever wondered at what extent law enforcement officers might go to concoct a cover up, the Danziger bridge incident now offers us a rare view into that depth, and it’s pretty deep. At each point in the process, from the time he arrived on the Danziger bridge to the point where he finally agreed to cooperate with federal investigators and plead guilty, he knew he was building a lie to hide the murder of two people and attempted murder on several others.
The scope of this conspiracy to obstruct justice involved no only Lohman and the 7 officers involved in the incident, but also the officer that he assigned to investigate it, bringing the total number of officers involved up to at least 9, if not more. While headline-worthy not only for the history of the case, but also for the scope of the subsequent cover-up, this type of conspiracy to obstruct justice is not unique by any stretch… in fact, there have been several other similar cases recently:
On February 16, 2010, Stoughton MA police officer Anthony Bickerton plead guilty to obstructing a federal investigation into corruption within the Stoughton Police Department that involved theft when Bickerton hid evidence at his home for another officer targeted by the probe. Bickerton was the third officer ensnared by this particular probe that had another officer plead guilty in January and a third turn over and cooperate with federal agents. All three had resigned abruptly late last year.
On December 15, 2009, federal authorities indicted the Shenandoah PA police chief and two of his officers for conspiracy to obstruct justice, witness tampering, and evidence tampering in a racially motivated murder case involving several local teens that the officers allegedly helped concoct stories to prevent their prosecution for the crime. Not only this, but the police chief and a fourth officer were indicted for extortion charges in a separate case. On top of this, a lawsuit was filed alleging yet another cover up where officers allegedly beat a detainee to death then hung the man in an effort to make the beating death appear to be a suicide.
On January 21, 2010, the city of Marlow OK fired two officers and continues to investigate the chief of police on allegations that they had lied about a drug bust at trial which forced prosecutors to drop all charges in the case. Furthermore, allegations of rampant corruption within the department includes missing drug evidence, warrantless raids, motorists being robbed by officers, a cover up of an officer-involved fatality, and allegations of child molestation made by 8 minors against one officer still on active duty. The police chief has been on paid leave since late October.
On February 11, 2010, four Manhattan Beach CA police officers where placed on paid leave while investigated on allegations that they attempted to cover up a DUI hit and run accident that involved a fellow officer’s vehicle. The vehicle in question caused a three car pileup and fled the scene before officers arrived. While it was later located, abandoned at a nearby gas station, officers never filed a report once they discovered it was registered to a Manhattan Beach cop.
On February 11, 2010, the town of Dolton IL was ordered to pay $110,000 in damages to a man who had been beaten and threatened with a loaded rifle pointed at his head, then was wrongfully arrested to cover for the incident when officers allegedly planted drugs on him to justify the arrest. While the victim was later cleared of all charges, the police chief was accused of purposefully withholding exculpatory evidence that would have cleared him sooner. After all was said and done, 5 officers and the police chief were implicated in the assault and subsequent attempted cover up.
The list of similar cases tracked by the NPMSRP over the last 10 months goes on even further, including the well-known “Walt Disney the Truth” case in Hollywood Florida to the the recent cover up of a DUI accident involving the police chief of Riverside California… and many more beyond that.
All of these cases share the commonality of conspiracy in which multiple officers work in concert to cover up illicit or improper activity through falsified statements and/or evidence tampering. What make these different is that the cover up involves officers who were not a party to the original incident, but who do engage in criminal acts through the act of conspiracy. It is, at it’s essence, a practical application of the blue wall of silence to the Nth degree. Not only is it that the officers refuse to “rat out” a fellow cop, but that they are willing to take it a step further and become criminals to cover for another officer actively.
The problem, of course, is that these kinds of cases demonstrate one of the most frustrating, and frightening, aspects of police misconduct in that, for every case of conspiracy to obstruct that is ultimately uncovered… how many more were such conspiracies were successful in hiding the truth?
How many victims of police misconduct will never see justice and how many officers will continue to operate in a state of pure impunity because of it?
We cannot ever hope to find out so long as law enforcement agencies are permitted to operate in secret by keeping internal investigations and misconduct records from the public as is the law in a majority of US states. Worse yet, the frequency of such conspiracies can only grow as more and more states continue to join the others in creating exemptions to public records laws which close police disciplinary records from public records requests.
Yes, the latest development in the Danziger bridge case should be lauded as a step towards justice, but for every success in uncovering such conspiracies, we can’t help but wonder at how many more never see the light of day, and how many more will continue to occur in the future in the darkness of governmentally-enforced secrecy.
Ultimately, this is nothing to cheer about until such cases lead to reforms that open up the disciplinary processes in our law enforcement agencies and improves the level of accountability that the public should expect from the same police officers charged to hold the public accountable for their misdeeds. Because, in the end, these kinds of cover-ups are indicative of a problematic system of police accountability that is permissive of such behavior.
It’s not just a problem with few bad apples, but a problem of those apples stewing together inside a bad barrel that the public is rarely allowed to peer inside of.
I wrote something earlier this year talking about who the public blindly addresses instances of corruption and misconduct and talked about how they all too quickly write them off as an “isolated incident” or blame it on the “one bad apple syndrome”. They have been blaming the “one bad apple” for decades now and the official bad apple count has far exceeded the acceptable bad apple to bushel basket ratio long, long years ago.
The argument no longer holds water when you begin to look at the sheer numbers and the magnitude of news stories in print and TV media today of misconduct and crimes committed by our police on a daily basis. And these are just the incidents that are reported in the media. Incidents from departments that are large enough to warrant media scrutiny. We really have no idea what the true number is and we have no idea just how many cases are swept under the rug in smaller departments where the whole crew is corrupt to the core and willing to go to extreme lengths to cover up crimes. You know if they are willing to commit a crime to cover up a murder, they are willing to commit similar crimes to cover up lesser acts of misconduct.
We live in dangerous times and a dangerous world. As each day passes we march one more step down a path where we trust our law enforcement less and less. And its by no actions of our own, its all based on crimes they themselves commit, then cover up.
Its scary, but we are all just one unlucky roll of the dice away from becoming a “crime statistic” (aka victim of police misconduct) at the hands of a corrupt cop. Unlucky to be stopped by a corrupt cop having a bad day and what starts out as a bad tail or tag light stop turns into a murder, then a coverup.
We are slowly becoming Germany circa 1933
One of the biggest misconceptions the general public has about law enforcement is that they get rid of the bad cops. We know the truth; it’s beyond disgusting how they stick up & cover for each other. To perputuate this lie, and leave bad cops free to prey on the citizens at their whim, is just one reason everyone needs to keep a close eye on law enforcement.
It’s true that police officers commonly work with one another in conspiracy. This especially happens in cases of small departments where police officers, including detectives work closely with one another on a day to day basis. Many small cities and even universities have their own departments in which unprofessional personnel will break laws, resulting in torts with libel and conspiracy to injure. These cases are unknown until they result in a civil case with higher courts, which is quite expensive. In most cases, a civil case is not brought, and the injustice goes unnanounced
Jessica,
I would imagine that this is true. One of the largest problems with our project is posed by small, insular departments in areas of the country where there isn’t much of a news media presence. This is where a vast majority of our under-reporting occurs as cases of misconduct just don’t make it into public light because of a combination of the culture of silence and a lack of interest in uncovering police misconduct by small-town news organizations that rely on the police for most of their stories. Not only this, but most victims don’t have too many choices of people to turn to when they become victims given that sometimes even the local judge might be in on the graft.
Take Jericho Arkansas for instance, a town so small that the large, for it’s size, police department was nothing more than a revenue source via speed traps, but nobody knew where the money from all those tickets went when the town’s police cars started being repossessed due to non-payment. Things only became exposed there after a fire chief was shot in court by an officer in an argument over a questionable ticket… otherwise, all the other problems there would never have come to light.
How many small-towns like this are out there? Probably more than we realize or will ever find out about… and that’s a scary thing.
Thanks for the comment!