A little over a week after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005, charred human remains were found in the back seat of an incinerated white Chevy, dumped on a dirt levee a block away from a New Orleans Police Department station. After examining what he described as a “body bag full of bones,” the Orleans Parish coroner left the cause of death on an autopsy report blank, ruling out a homicide investigation.

The bones were those of a 31-year-old Black man named Henry Glover. For years, the Glover case lay dormant until reporter A.C. Thompson began investigating suspicious deaths in Katrina’s aftermath. FRONTLINE’s 2010 documentary Law & Disorder, produced in partnership with ProPublica and The Times-Picayune in New Orleans, traced Glover’s death back to the city’s police force. The investigation detailed how Glover was shot by a rookie officer on Sept. 2, 2005, and died in custody. His body was later set ablaze by another officer. Five NOPD officers were charged in 2010 with 11 federal civil rights violations in connection with Glover’s case, though four were eventually cleared of all charges.

The documentary examined the stories of Glover and at least nine other civilians who were shot by NOPD officers in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina. It also traced a history of lawlessness within the NOPD — a police department that one former Justice Department official described at the time as the nation’s most problematic. Following the revelations, then-New Orleans Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the police department. In 2012, the investigation resulted in the NOPD entering a consent decree — an agreement between the city, the police department and the DOJ — that would put the NOPD under federal oversight and compel it to enact reforms.

As the documentary Law & Disorder becomes newly available on FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, we examine recent developments surrounding Glover’s case and the federal oversight of the NOPD.

The Glover Case

For years, former Orleans Parish Coroner Frank Minyard declined to classify Glover’s death as a homicide, saying there wasn’t enough forensic evidence to do so. His stance remained unchanged even after former NOPD officer David Warren — the rookie who shot Glover — was convicted and sentenced to 25 years in 2011. Warren was initially tried alongside four other NOPD officers involved in Glover’s case, but in 2012, a federal appeals court ordered a new trial for Warren, saying “he suffered specific and compelling prejudice” from being tried with his colleagues. Warren was acquitted by a jury in the 2013 retrial after testifying that he feared for his life when he fired his gun at the unarmed Glover that day.

In April 2015 — a decade after the killing and almost two years after Warren’s acquittal — Minyard’s successor, Orleans Parish Coroner Jeffrey Rouse, officially declared Glover’s death a homicide.

To the Glover family, the reclassification was a moment of hope, Jared Fishman, the former lead prosecutor on the Glover case, told FRONTLINE. The family had asked for Glover’s death to be classified a homicide so it could be reviewed by state prosecutors, The Times-Picayune reported. They also pushed for the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s office to charge Warren with murder.

An attorney for Warren stated at the time that he didn’t expect the reclassification to have an effect on his client’s acquittal. “Because there is no newly discovered evidence, it is fundamentally unfair, if not a violation of the principal [sic] of Double Jeopardy, to commence a third trial of Mr. Warren,” the statement read.

Fishman, who wrote “Fire on the Levee: The Murder of Henry Glover and the Search for Justice After Hurricane Katrina,” said, “The possibility that Warren would ever be prosecuted under state law reduced dramatically over time.” He added, “It was a hard case, and [the DA’s office] didn’t want to lose. As time passed, there was little political upside.” Warren has not faced further charges.

By 2014, the only person serving time in connection with Glover’s killing and the subsequent cover-up was Gregory McRae, a former NOPD officer. He was initially sentenced to 17 years in 2011 on four counts of burning Glover’s body and civil rights violations — a sentence that U.S. District Judge Lance Africk upheld in 2014 after an appeals court tossed out one of the counts. However, in February 2016, Judge Africk reduced McRae’s sentence to 11 years and nine months after an appeals court tossed out a second count of McRae’s conviction. According to Fishman, McRae is now out of prison.

In December 2016, the City of New Orleans reached a $13.3 million settlement with the relatives of people who became victims of police violence around the time of Hurricane Katrina — including members of the Glover family, who were entitled to $1.13 million of the settlement — The Times-Picayune reported. The deal was accompanied by then-New Orleans Mayor Landrieu’s public apology to the victims’ families on the city’s behalf.

The NOPD After a Decade Under Consent Decree

The Justice Department began investigating misconduct in the NOPD in 2010 and found that NOPD officers “too frequently” used excessive force and conducted unlawful stops, searches and arrests with few repercussions, as well as engaging in racial and gender-based profiling. In 2012, the City of New Orleans, the NOPD and the DOJ entered into a consent decree, and the plan was approved by a federal judge in 2013.

In 2019, the consent decree’s monitors noted the NOPD’s progress and the federal judge overseeing the decree expressed hope that the department could be in full compliance with the pact by 2020.

The City of New Orleans is now in a legal back-and-forth with the Justice Department to try to bring the consent decree to an end. In an August 2022 motion to terminate the consent decree, the city argued that most of the demands for reform were met, and that compliance was a “subjective decision” by the DOJ that was resource-draining for the city.

The Justice Department opposed the city’s request in an April 2023 court filing, citing issues such as 61% of NOPD officers’ serious uses of force in 2021 not being justified, less than one-third of sergeants in its internal investigations bureau completing a training required by the consent decree, and racially-biased policing continuing to be problematic. Though the city and NOPD’s improvements were acknowledged, “progress towards compliance is not the same as full and effective compliance that has proven durable,” the filing said. DOJ officials had said the NOPD would need to sustain any reforms it had achieved for at least two years before the consent decree could be lifted.

The city filed a response in April 2023 saying the DOJ’s “perfection-based model” was an unattainable standard. After a June hearing where the city argued to end the consent decree, a federal judge said she’d take the matter under advisement.

In the meantime, the NOPD has also come under scrutiny by federal monitors for its internal investigations regarding payroll scams.

Anne Kirkpatrick, who has led police departments in California and Washington state, and who supporters describe as a reformer, was confirmed as NOPD’s new police chief on Oct. 19. In September, Kirkpatrick said in an interview that she plans to have a “good working relationship” with the federal monitors to get the NOPD out of the consent decree.

Watch the full documentary Law & Disorder:

Inci Sayki, Goggin Journalism Fellow, FRONTLINE/Columbia Journalism School Fellowship

Email:

inci_sayki@wgbh.org

Twitter:

@incisayki