New Orleans mayor announces $13.3 million in settlements over Hurricane Katrina police shootings

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Stranded on New Orleans’ Canal Street, Robert Termier and Ruth Ann Lewis await rescue attempt by helicopter. They were later evacuated by boat.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Parts of New Orleans remain under high floodwaters, particularly areas nearest to Lake Pontchartrain.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Residents of New Orleans wait to leave the city on buses bound for the Houston Astrodome. Many, like the woman lying down, were suffering from dehydration. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Four-month-old Alison Haynes rests in the box the family’s military food rations came in, as sisters Lexus, left, and Ariel have a meal. The family is among those who took refuge at the Superdome. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Dillion Chancey, 7, rode out Hurricane Katrina in Biloxi with his mother and father. The family lost virtually everything it owned to the storm (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Kathy Haywood shields her 86-year-old mother, Rose McGrath, from the dust kicked up by helicopters making rescue missions in New Orleans. The mother and daughter were evacuated from a refugee shelter in the hurricane-devastated city

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Hundreds gather in hopes of a ride out of New Orleans. New emergencies continued to threaten thousands of refugees, and efforts were underway to evacuate the city.

(Carolyn Cole/ Los Angeles Times )

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A man is helped by his family onto the evacuation bus. Many of the people staying at the Superdome were suffering from dehydration and other ailments.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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A critically ill man is helped at the triage area of the Superdome, where many ill and elderly people are being treated. Observers say the hurricane has exposed the racial fault line between blacks and whites in America. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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A shopping cart helps children stay above the filthy water as residents make their way to the Superdome for evacuation (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Milvirtha Hendricks, 85, can do nothing but wait for help at New Orleans’ convention center. She was later evacuated, almost a week after the storm hit. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Sgt. Alex Martinez of the Texas Air National Guard uses a chair to shovel away debris at the Superdome as storm victims queue up to leave after days of misery (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Ceasar Martin, 20, lies in a helicopter with other evacuees as they prepare to take off from New Orleans Convention Center. The sick and elderly and their families were being evacuated first (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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A boat with a rescue team looking for survivors moves along a street near Elysian Fields Avenue in New Orleans. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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Florida National Guard members rescued Henery Johnson, 5 months, off an apartment rooftop in New Orleans on Friday. Louisiana officials are begging Washington to help shore up natural buffers so that the city can withstand future storms. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

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An Army National Guardsman stationed at the New Orleans Convention Center. Troops did not encounter mob violence there that they’d expected.

(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

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New Orleans Police Officers Mike Duzmar, left, and Patrick Hartman, whose home is unlivable, search for survivors. The two were part of a Marine-led team sweeping the area. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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U.S. Marines trudge through mud as they go door to door in search of survivors and bodies in New Orleans’ 9th Ward. Louisiana officials said the city was now 50% flooded, with water levels receding rapidly. Nearly two-thirds of southeastern Louisiana’s water treatment plants were up and running. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Rabbi Isaac Leider wades through floodwaters to remove a Torah scroll from Congregation Beth Israel in New Orleans.

(Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times)

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The Lafon Nursing Home of the Holy Family in New Orleans was the scene of 19 deaths. Many of the city’s dead “were the poorer and older people,” Coroner Frank Minyard said. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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Lawrence “Butch” Heller, 49, rests after searching a relative’s house in Chalmette, La., for belongings. The markings above the mailbox were made by searchers. Residents were allowed back into St. Bernard Parish, which saw major flooding from Hurricane Katrina. Some are determined to stay, while others will relocate (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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All that John MacFarlane has left of his Waveland, Miss., house is a photo. He now lives in the pop-up trailer. The federal government will be spending billions to rebuild the Gulf Coast (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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A New York firefighter watches water flow over a levee and into the Gentilly neighborhood. Rains from Hurricane Rita have inundated canals and reflooded parts of the city that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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Lela Wells of Vancleave, a town in rural Mississippi, watches President Bush on television. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

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FEMA has installed dozens of prefabricated houses at a mobile home park in Pearl River, La., about 30 miles northeast of New Orleans. Similar sites will sprout across Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana, and Congress estimates that about 450,000 families will need long-term housing (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

By Associated Press

Dec. 19, 2016 4 PM PT

Reporting from NEW ORLEANS — The mayor of New Orleans announced Monday that the city has reached settlements totaling $13.3 million in lawsuits over deadly police shootings after Hurricane Katrina and a fatal beating just before the 2005 storm, and he apologized to the victims’ families on behalf of the city.

“I am hoping that in some sense the strength of these families will help the city find peace in our future,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at an afternoon news conference after a private prayer service attended by some relatives of the victims.

Landrieu said the settlements with 17 plaintiffs end all civil litigation involving those cases. It took more than 11 years because criminal cases had to be dealt with first, he said.

Sherrel Johnson, the mother of 17-year-old James Brissette, who died in the Sept. 4, 2005, shootings on the Danziger Bridge, was on hand for Landrieu’s announcement. She said she “wholeheartedly” accepts his apology.

“Since that time, it has been an awful long and rough road. But me and my family got through it,” she said. Later, she added, “Now this is closure for me, and I can go forward ... because I know the old New Orleans does not exist anymore.”

A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged in a series of Justice Department civil rights investigations after the August 2005 storm. All but one of the cases centered on alleged police misconduct during the chaos that gripped the flooded city.

Eleven officers pleaded guilty to charges related to deadly shootings on a bridge less than a week after Katrina’s landfall. Officers shot and killed two unarmed people and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge before engaging in a cover-up that included a planted gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports.

Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison, a mentally disabled man, died in the bridge shootings. Lance Madison, Ronald’s brother, was on the bridge that day and was initially arrested after being falsely accused of shooting at officers.

Another brother thanked the mayor and police chief for reforms since the storm.

A federal judge who presided over a trial for five of the officers charged in the bridge shootings threw out their convictions in 2013. U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt said at least three government attorneys posted anonymous comments on a New Orleans newspaper’s website, creating a “carnival atmosphere” that “distorted and perverted” justice in the case.

Engelhardt ordered a new trial for the five officers, who ultimately pleaded guilty in April. Lawsuits over the bridge shootings had been placed on hold while the criminal cases were pending.

Five other officers were tried on charges related to the death of 31-year-old Henry Glover, who was fatally shot outside a strip mall before his body was burned.

Former officer Gregory McRae, who burned Glover’s body in a car, is the only law enforcer whose conviction in the case still stands. McRae is serving a prison sentence of more than 11 years.

The officer who fatally shot Glover was convicted of manslaughter but was later acquitted by another jury after an appeals court awarded him a new trial.

Two former New Orleans police officers were convicted of charges stemming from the fatal beating of Raymond Robair, a 48-year-old handyman who died less than a month before Katrina struck.

Former training officer Melvin Williams was sentenced to more than 21 years in prison for kicking Robair, beating him with a baton, and telling doctors he was suffering from a drug overdose. Matthew Dean Moore, the recruit Williams was training at the time of the beating, was sentenced to more than five years in prison for submitting a false report and lying to the FBI about the encounter.

Robair’s relatives sued the city and former police Supt. Eddie Compass.

LaShonda Enclade, Robair’s daughter, attended the news conference. She said she forgives the city, but forgiving the officers is more difficult.

“The word forgive is a very, very, hard word. ... I’m not going to say I can ever forgive them. It’s something to be worked on,” she said.

UPDATES:

4:00 p.m.: This article was updated with additional details and context.

1:15 p.m.: This article was updated with the dollar amount to be paid in the settlements.

This article was originally published at 10:35 a.m.