By Lee A. Daniels

A former New Orleans police officer’s guilty plea in federal court this week has further exposed the police department cover-up about the police shooting of six unarmed civilians on that city’s Danziger Bridge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

When the barrage was over, two of the civilians, Ronald Madison, 40, who was walking with his brother, Lance, and James Brissette, 19, who was walking with members of his family, lay dead, and five were wounded.

The guilty plea Wednesday by Michael Hunter, 33, to one count of conspiring to obstruct and one count of misprision of a felony, was the third admission by one of the seven police officers allegedly involved in the incident that the officers knew the civilians were unarmed but chose to shoot at them nonetheless.

However, Hunter’s description of the police officers’ actions and subsequent decision to lie about what had happened was the most detailed yet.

Hunter’s account of the Madison’s murder, contained in a filing with the U.S. District Court of New Orleans, states that As he “lay dying on the pavement, (a police sergeant) ran down the bridge toward Ronald and asked an officer if Ronald was ‘one of them,’ When the officer replied in the affirmative, (the sergeant) began kicking or stomping Ronald Madison with his foot.”

The details of Hunter’s statement provoked U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance to say from the bench, “I don’t think you can listen to that account without being sickened by the raw brutality of the shooting and the craven lawlessness of the cover-up.”

Romell Madison, another of Ronald Madison’s brothers, said after the court session had concluded, “The cruelty that my brothers had to endure, and the other victims had to endure, is heartbreaking.”

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