Five New Orleans Cops Indicted in Post-Katrina Killing

By Julianne Hing Jun 14, 2010

A federal grand jury has indicted five New Orleans police officers, three current and two former, on 11 counts of misconduct and wrongdoing in the shooting and subsequent coverup of Henry Glover’s death following Katrina. On Friday, David Warren, the officer who is charged with shooting Glover, was arrested. Glover’s death is the second major post-Katrina New Orleans cop scandal the Department of Justice has taken on. Previously, seven NOPD cops were indicted in the Danziger Bridge incident, in which a group of officers were charged with participation in the killing of two men and attempting to cover it up. So far, five have pleaded guilty in that case. All told, the federal government has at least eight ongoing investigations into the beleaguered department. According to Friday’s indictment, Warren shot Glover on September 2, 2005. When a stranger named William Tanner tried to bring the wounded Glover to a local elementary school that’d been taken over by SWAT officers, police officers intervened. They beat both Tanner and Glover’s brother before driving off in Tanner’s car, with Glover’s body in the back seat, the indictment charges. Three months later, Tanner found his car stuck in the mud of a Mississippi River levee, charred and abandoned. A man’s burnt remains were found inside; they were eventually identified as those belonging to Henry Glover. In the ensuing months and years, local law enforcement launched what appears to be a massive coverup, likely involving many police officers and the coroner, who did not flag Glover’s death as a potential homicide. Investigative reporter A.C. Thompson, who first reported the shocking details of Glover’s case, says there were dozens of witnesses, most of them other police officers, at the elementary school when Tanner brought Glover there. The indictment charges the other officers with lying first to the FBI about the case and then to a federal grand jury.