By Lee A. Daniels

What was the scope of the lawlessness some New Orleans police officers unleashed against people in that devastated city in the days after Hurricane Katrina struck?

How many people did officers unlawfully shoot? How many did they kill? How many others were victimized in other ways by police officers’ illegal use of force? How high in the police department chain of command did knowledge of and toleration of the lawlessness spread?

Moments after New Orleans police officers shot and killed his brother on the Danziger Bridge in September 2005, Lance Madison is put under arrest and charged with eight counts of attempting to murder a police officer. Subsequently, a grand jury declined to indict Madison and instead charged seven police officers with murder and attempted murder in the Danziger Bridge shootings.

These are some of the major questions that loom in the wake of the February 24 confession by a former New Orleans police lieutenant that he helped cover up police officers’ unjustified shooting of six black unarmed civilians walking across a bridge in the beleaguered city on September 4, 2005.

Lieutenant Michael Lohmann, who supervised the police investigation of the so-called Danziger Bridge shooting, pleaded guilty in federal district court in New Orleans to one count of conspiring to obstruct justice.

In the incident seven police officers shot two men to death and seriously wounded four other members of a family. The officers claimed they had come under fire from snipers on the bridge and had shot back in self-defense, offering as proof a handgun they said they had found beside one of the slain men’s body. But the victims’ families and many other New Orleanians questioned the police account from the day it occurred. The police had arrested Lance Madison and charged him with eight counts of the attempted murder of a police officer. Madison had been walking across the bridge with his 40-year-old brother, Ronald, who was mentally disabled, when the police opened fire.

Ronald Madison was killed, struck by seven bullets. James Brissette, 19, who had been walking with his family at the base of the bridge, in search of a grocery store, was also shot to death by the police.

In 2006 a grand jury called to examine the evidence of the incident declined to indict Lance Madison. Instead, the panel indicted the police officers on charges of attempted murder and murder.

That indictment was later dismissed by a New Orleans criminal court judge.

That dismissal, in turn, prompted the federal Department of Justice to launch its own investigation of the shooting.

Michael Lohmann’s guilty plea means that the alleged conspiracy to conceal the truth of what happened on the Danziger Bridge may now have unraveled. He is the first of those involved to declare there was a conspiracy to obscure an unjustified shooting: that the civilians had been unarmed and had presented no threat to the police or other civilians, and that the police officers had placed the handgun at the scene after they had shot the civilians.

Lohmann’s guilty plea was delivered in court under a bill of information, rather than a formal indictment.

Legal analysts said that indicates he has already signed a plea agreement and is cooperating with the government.

In response to Lohmann’s plea, New Orleans police superintendent Warren Riley called a news conference to say that Lohmann should be imprisoned “for the maximum penalty allowed” because his behavior “has disgraced the [police force]. We are all victims of this breach of trust.”

Lohmann’s plea is likely to increase the legal pressure not only on police officers in the Danziger Bridge case but the city police department as a whole. There were at least four other incidents that same week of New Orleans police officers shooting unarmed civilians in questionable circumstances. Those incidents, too, are the subject of federal or city investigations.

Wednesday, as Lohmann faced a federal judge in the New Orleans courtroom, the Madison and Bartholomew families, the families of the Danziger Bridge victims, sat listening to the litany of evidence their relatives were killed and wounded without justification. Later, in response to reporters’ questions outside the court, Romel Madison, another of the Madison brothers, said the proceeding “was a relief to see … The citizens of New Orleans should be relieved that there is still justice.” Mary Howell, the family’s attorney, said, “It’s been a long struggle for them. They are taking it one day at a time. And there’s still a long way to go.”

Lee A. Daniels is Director of Communications for the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. and Editor-in-Chief of TheDefendersOnline.