No Justice for the African-Americans Targeted by White Vigilantes After the Katrina Flooding

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted December 20, 2008.

LS: What did you expect going into the story?

AT: I was completely naive before I went to New Orleans. I was a virtual Bambi before I started spending time in New Orleans. Nothing there works as it should. I figured I could just make a public-records request to the coroner for the autopsy reports and in a few weeks I'd know how many people were shot to death after Katrina. Wrong. When I called the coroner asking about records, a staffer there told me the office didn't abide by the state law, which requires autopsies to be made public. I mean this person just came out and said, "We don't follow the law."

Every time I dealt with the local government, it was the same. Getting answers to basic questions was near impossible. Just finding phone numbers for public officials was a challenge.

LS: There is a sidebar to the story, focusing on the case of one man in particular, Henry Glover, whose murder seems to have taken place with the knowledge of New Orleans police. Why did you decide to concentrate on him?

AT: The family of Henry Glover has been incredibly damaged by his death. Can you imagine what its like to have your loved one die like that: abandoned by the cops who could've helped him and then set ablaze like a pile of rubbish? I'd call his sister, and she'd just start bawling on the phone. For a long time, his mother wouldn't talk to me because it was just too hard.

The photos of Glover still haunt me. I've been very close to a lot of death, but those photos of Glover -- nothing but a skull and bones and some burned meat and ashes -- haunt me. They show up in my dreams. And that brings me to a larger point, which is that surveying so much death is not healthy.

LS: Perhaps it should come as no surprise that post-Katrina autopsies were completely disorganized. But it was surprising that county officials would be so unwilling to release them. Why so much secrecy?

AC: I don't know why they were so secret. And I shouldn't speculate. What I can say, for sure, is that the coroner and his staff have adopted a very oppositional approach towards the media. He keeps saying he won't give autopsy records to reporters covering one of the biggest stories in recent history, and journalists like myself keep suing. I should also say that Lori Mince, the attorney who handled our case, really understands why this material should be public. She worked very, very hard to bring it into the light.

There are a ton of lessons to be gleaned from the autopsies of Katrina victims. Who died? How did they die? Where did they die?

Unfortunately, none of these questions have been fully answered, because the Orleans Parish coroner won't make these records public -- unless you take him to court, as we did. The coroner's position -- which stands in contravention of Louisiana law -- means state health researchers and academics haven't been able to study these autopsy documents.

Those autopsy documents are also flawed in many ways. This is something that nobody has really discussed. The coroner's autopsy records don't include info about where people were found, what they were wearing at the time, what was found at the death scenes (i.e.: was a gun lying next to the body?). An autopsy file should include this kind of info so the coroner can make an accurate determination as to what happened to the dead person. Was it murder? Suicide? Was there a suicide note? Without this type of info, a coroner -- and by extension, law enforcement -- will have trouble figuring out how the deceased died, and following up, if necessary.

Also, since there's no info about locations where bodies were discovered, police and prosecutors would have a great deal of trouble bringing charges in any murder cases from the post-storm days. When you have no written proof of where a body was found, you've immediately got a whole lot of reasonable-doubt issues for a jury to ponder. Was the body really found on Bourbon Street as this guy from the coroner's office remembers? Or could his memory be wrong? With no written record you're screwed.

LS: You write about the few media outlets that covered these murderers as doing so "in glowing terms." One called the gangs "the ultimate neighborhood watch." To what extent do you think this speaks to a deeper problem in the coverage of race in the South?

AC: I don't know if it's just the South. I think media outlets across this nation struggle in their coverage of race and ethnicity. The stories I read about the Algiers Point militia disturbed me on several levels. Here's why: The notion of a group of white people patrolling their predominantly white neighborhood with guns should raise immediate questions for any journalist, especially one working in New Orleans. First question: What role is race playing in the formation and activities of this little army? I didn't get the sense that reporters who covered the Algiers Point vigilantes brought much skepticism or consciousness about race to their reportage. I could be wrong, but I didn't see it in what I read.

LS: One of the disturbing things about your piece is how these vigilantes placed property so high above human life. You write that they considered themselves "righteous defenders of property." Do you think this warped value system is something that is an intrinsic part of our culture that Hurricane Katrina brought to the surface?

See more stories tagged with: violence, race, new orleans, african americans, murder, algiers point, vigilantes

Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer.

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »