NEW ORLEANS -  Three police officers charged in the killing of two unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina and a cover-up that followed pleaded not guilty on Wednesday. Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen and Officer Anthony Villavaso stood before a federal magistrate in green prison garb, shackled at the waist and ankles. They will remain jailed at least until a hearing Friday. A tentative trial date is set for Sept. 13.

Magistrate Louis Moore Jr. read the counts — 13 against Bowen, 11 against Gisevius and 10 against Villavaso. Former officer Robert Faulcon made his initial court appearance Tuesday in Texas, where he was arrested, but has not entered a plea. The charges against the four carry a maximum sentence of life in prison or the death penalty, although U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said the Justice Department hasn’t decided whether to seek the latter punishment.

The family of two victims — Ronald Madison, who was killed, and his brother, Lance, who survived — sat in the front row of the packed courtroom. Gisevius cried quietly as he stood with his lawyer. "We’ll be able to pick this indictment apart," said Frank DeSalvo, Bowen’s lawyer. "There is a lot of fantasy there."

Bowen, Gisevius and Villavaso were suspended without pay after the indictments were released Tuesday, NOPD spokesman Bob Young said on Wednesday. Five former officers already have pleaded guilty to charges they helped cover up the shootings. Prosecutors have said police fabricated witnesses, falsified reports and plotted to plant a gun to make it appear that the shootings were justified.

The shootings at the Danziger Bridge happened Sept. 4, 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina smashed levees and left the city flooded and in chaos. Bodies floated in filthy flood waters. There were reports of looting and gunshots rang out throughout the blacked-out city. It was in this backdrop that police, desperate to regain control, were called about 9 a.m. that morning after reports of gunfire at the bridge. Seven heavily armed New Orleans police officers stormed the bridge. Prosecutors said they shot at the first people they saw, people they say were crossing the bridge to find food. When it was over, two men were dead and four others lay wounded on the hot concrete.

The indictment claims Faulcoun shot mentally disabled Ronald Madison, 40, in the back as he ran away on the west side of the bridge. Bowen is charged with stomping and kicking Madison while he was lying on the ground, wounded but still alive. Madison’s brother, Lance, was arrested and charged with trying to kill police officers. He was jailed for three weeks before being released without indictment.

Bowen, Gisevius, Faulcon and Villavaso also are accused of shooting at an unarmed family on the east side of the bridge, killing 17-year-old James Brissette and wounding four others. Sgt. Arthur Kaufman and retired Sgt. Gerard Dugue, who helped investigate the shootings, were charged with participating in the alleged cover-up. Charges against them include obstruction of justice. Kaufman and Bowen "specifically discussed using Hurricane Katrina to excuse failures in the investigation, and thereby to help make any inquiry into the shooting go away," the indictment states.

Kaufman allegedly took a gun from his home and claimed to have found it at the crime scene a day after the shootings, then lied about that gun under oath and in reports, prosecutors said. Dugue is accused of lying to a federal agent when he said he had no concerns about the truth of the officers’ statements. "In fact, he had many ‘red flags’ and ‘question marks’ about the officers’ stories, but he reported the questionable information as fact and relied upon it without qualification," the indictment says.

The charges, unsealed Tuesday, are the culmination of a two-year probe by the federal government. An internal police investigation found no wrongdoing by officers. A state grand jury convened to look into the matter charged seven officers with murder or attempted murder, but a state judge threw out all the charges in 2008.

Two men have been arrested by police investigating a shooting in which three police officers were injured in north Belfast on 12 July. The men, aged 25 and 35, were taken to Antrim police station for questioning about the gun attack in North Queen Street, during a riot on Monday.

Meanwhile, a 20-year-old man is due in court later on a charge of disorderly behaviour in south Belfast on 12 July. A total of seven people have been arrested so far over recent violence. On Wednesday, during a fourth night of trouble in north Belfast, police fired a number of baton rounds. A car was set on fire and petrol bombs and fireworks were thrown during sporadic violence in Ardoyne. Two men in their late teens and early 20s were arrested. One was released pending further inquiries. Wednesday night’s trouble was less intense than the violence seen on previous evenings and involved fewer rioters. Police used a water cannon to disperse the crowd. They said a number of police officers had been injured but none were thought to be in a serious condition. Assistant Chief Constable Duncan McCausland said police would be conducting a major investigation into the violence. He said fewer people were involved on Wednesday night, but there was a "hard core" of about 12 intent on causing trouble.

He thanked community workers for their efforts to calm the situation and appealed to them to redouble their efforts.
"We will now continue to work hard to identity those involved and will be doing our utmost to put people before the courts," he said. "We are very clear that we can and we will continue to maintain public safety and public confidence – we would appeal for the assistance of everyone to that end."  Earlier, on Wednesday, a coffee jar bomb was found during an alert in the Highbury Gardens area. The army was called to the scene. Sinn Fein blamed dissident republicans for the device and said they showed "absolute disregard" for the people of the area.
"This is the summer holidays, many children are off school and could have found this device," the area’s Sinn Fein MLA Caral ni Chuilin said. "The repercussions do not bear thinking about." There has been criticism that the police are not going in to arrest the trouble makers. The chairman of the NI Assembly’s Justice Committee, Lord Morrow, claimed a policy of appeasement by containment was in operation. However, policing board member Basil McCrea who was at Ardoyne with senior PSNI officers to observe, defended the way the police were handling the trouble.
"I am quite convinced that the tactics they are using are the right ones. But it does take a lot of time and it does tie up a lot of police officers," he said. "It is probably the best of a bad situation." On Wednesday a senior police officer said there would be arrests in coming days after detectives had studied CCTV footage.

New Mexico authorities said a former employee shot and killed five people at a business Monday in Albuquerque before turning the gun on himself.Police said officers responded to a 911 call at 9:26 a.m. (11:26 a.m. ET) that multiple shots had been fired. When officers entered the building, they found a total of 10 people shot — four were dead, including a man believed to be the shooter, officials said. Two have since died as a result of gunshot wounds; two are in stable condition and two others are receiving emergency medical attention, police said.

“We believe this incident to be a domestic-violence workplace situation,” Albuquerque Police Chief Ray Schultz said.

Oakland, California — A former police officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing an unarmed man in Oakland, California, apologized to the public and described his memories of the moments after the shooting in a handwritten letter. In the letter, Johannes Mehserle said he was “truly sorry” for killing Oscar Grant.

“For now, and forever, I will live, breathe, sleep, and not sleep with the memory of Mr. Grant screaming ‘you shot me’ and me putting my hands on the bullet wound thinking the pressure would help while I kept telling him ‘you’ll be okay,” Mehserle says in the letter. “I tried to tell myself that maybe this shot would not be so serious, but I recall how sick I felt when Mr. Grant stopped talking, closed his eyes and seemed to change his breathing.”

Mehserle’s letter was dated July 4, four days before a jury found him guilty of involuntary manslaughter for shooting 22-year-old Grant on an Oakland train platform on January 1, 2009.Mehserle, who was on duty as a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer at the time of the incident, said at the trial that he intended to draw and fire his Taser rather than his gun.

“I have and will continue to live everyday of my life knowing that Mr. Grant should not have been shot,” his letter said. “No words can express how truly sorry I am.

“The involuntary manslaughter conviction usually carries a maximum four-year sentence, but some in Oakland expected a tougher penalty for the former police officer, and took to the streets in protest Thursday.Crowds broke the glass of a Foot Locker and other stores. Others threw sneakers out of the store as police wearing gas masks stormed the area.Outside the courtroom, Grant family members expressed outrage at the verdict.

“My son was murdered. He was murdered. He was murdered. My son was murdered,” said Grant’s mother, Wanda Johnson. “The system has let us down, but God will never ever let us down.”Johnson and other speakers said African-Americans have been the victims of police abuse and a biased judicial system. She said Mehserle wasn’t found accountable.”We couldn’t get even six hours of deliberations,” said Johnson, who accused jurors of being unfair. Oakland police said there were 78 arrests during Thursday night’s protests on charges including failure to disperse, resisting arrest, burglary, vandalism and assaulting a police officer.Mehserle’s trial was moved from Alameda County to Los Angeles because of pre-trial publicity. Members of the jury, which included no African-Americans, said they were unanimous in their decision. Their finding indicates that Mehserle was criminally negligent.

The shooting was captured on a bystander’s cell-phone video camera. The video, which showed Mehserle pulling his gun and fatally shooting Grant in the back as another officer knelt on the unarmed man, was widely circulated on the Internet and on news broadcasts, and it spurred several protests in and around Oakland. Mehserle resigned his position a few days after the incident and was later arrested in Nevada. His sentencing is set for August 6. Involuntary manslaughter carries a maximum sentence of up to four years in prison under California law. But the judge could add an “enhancement” that could provide a longer sentence because a firearm was used.