FBI agents close Danziger Bridge to search for evidence

By Brendan McCarthy
September 26, 2009, 8:52PM

The FBI closed down the Danziger Bridge for several hours Saturday, allowing agents to scour the span, apparently searching for evidence as part of an ongoing federal investigation into police shootings of several civilians on the bridge four years ago this month.

Orleans police arrest a man after a shootout with police on the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 5, 2004. One man ended up dead, four others were wounded, and federal authorities are trying to determine if police acted properly.More than a dozen agents, members of the local FBI office's Evidence Response Team Unit, could be seen working on the eastern end of the high-rise Chef Menteur Highway bridge over the Industrial Canal.

The FBI's activity resembled a crime-scene reconstruction. Agents even had obtained a Budget rental truck, the same kind of vehicle used by New Orleans police officers the day of the controversial shootings six days after Hurricane Katrina.

Throughout the afternoon, agents picked at the bridge with shovels, sifted gravel through a large strainer and used surveying equipment. A sport-utility vehicle, with high-tech video equipment attached to its roof, repeatedly drove across the bridge.

Danziger Bridge Investigation

The FBI is also looking into other NOPD actions around the time of Katrina, including an incident in Algiers in which officers may have shot a 31-year-old local man, beaten him and his buddies, then later set fire to a vehicle with his body inside it, law-enforcement sources have said.

Tyrone Brown, groundskeeper for the TCL Car Wash near the intersection of Chef Menteur and Downman Road, said agents arrived at the bridge shortly before 8 a.m. Saturday. He said they asked to use a water hose connected to the car wash.

"We told them no problem, " Brown said. "You can't stop the feds, man. Gotta work with them."

As the FBI agents worked, Louisiana State Police troopers blocked access to the bridge at each end.

The Danziger Bridge carries several lanes of Chef Menteur Highway over the Industrial Canal, connecting Gentilly and eastern New Orleans.


Sheila Thorne, a spokeswoman for the FBI's New Orleans field division, confirmed that the evidence response team was examining the bridge as part of the federal civil-rights investigation into the shootings. She declined to comment further.

A federal grand jury has been meeting regularly since this spring to hear the facts of the case in which NOPD officers, responding to reports of shots fired at police, shot six people on the bridge, killing two men and wounding four others, on Sept. 4, 2005.

While the shooting victims said they were unarmed and were ambushed by the police, the officers have maintained they fired only after first coming under fire.

A state grand jury in late 2006 indicted seven police officers on murder and attempted murder charges, but a Criminal District Court judge last year dismissed the charges, saying that prosecutor errors had tainted the case.

Federal authorities then agreed to pick up the case.

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