By The Editors

Six New Orleans police officers were indicted on federal charges for having participated in a police shooting at the city’s Danziger Bridge days after Hurricane Katrina struck which left two unarmed civilians dead and four wounded.

Four of the police officers were charged by a federal grand jury with having actually done the shooting. If convicted, the officers could face life in prison or the death penalty. They are also charged with having tried to cover up the truth of what happened there.

The two others were charged with having been present at the incident and later also taking part in the attempted cover-up, charges which could bring them maximum sentences of from 70 to 120 years.

The indictments were announced in New Orleans by U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, a day after the federal grand jury had reached its decisions.

Although they were in fact widely expected, they nonetheless mark a stunning milestone in one of the several incidents of questionable lethal police actions that occurred in the days after the hurricane and compounded the devastation it had wrought.

The Danziger Bridge shooting and the killing of another civilian, Henry Glover, quickly became notorious and helped launch multiple investigations of the city’s police department’s actions in the aftermath of the hurricane.

Emphasizing the importance of the federal action in the Danziger Bridge case, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, joined Letten, and other officials from the Justice Department’s Office of Civil Rights and the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the news conference announcing the indictments.

He said the investigation showed the Justice “will vigorously pursue anyone who allegedly violated the law … We will not tolerate wrongdoing by those who have sworn to protect the public. We will hold offenders accountable.”

But Holder also praised “the vast majority of law enforcement officers here in New Orleans” and other civic leaders working to reform the department. He declared indictments were “an important step forward in administering justice, in healing community wounds, in improving public safety and in restoring public trust in this city’s police department.”