The debts, which average about $4,622 per recipient, represent slightly less than 5 percent of the roughly $8 billion that FEMA distributed to victims of Katrina and other 2005 storms. Some of the overpayments were caused by FEMA employees’ own mistakes, ranging from clerical errors to failing to interview applicants, according to congressional testimony.

FEMA is expected to mail out roughly 90,000 letters next week to inform disaster victims that they may be eligible for debt waivers. The recipients will have 60 days to respond and request a waiver.

Last year, the agency sent out debt notices in an effort to recover more than $385 million it says was improperly paid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma in 2005.

People are eligible for waivers if their household adjusted gross income on their most recent federal tax return was less than $90,000 and a FEMA error was solely responsible for the improper payment. The improper payment can’t involve any fraud or misrepresentation by the recipient.

The waiver only applies to disasters declared between Aug. 28, 2005 — the day before Katrina’s landfall — and the end of 2010. Households earning more than $90,000 could be eligible for partial waivers.

Another requirement is that collecting a debt would have to be “against equity and good conscience,” meaning that it would be “unfair under the circumstances of the case to collect the debt,” FEMA says.

In their responses to the waiver letter, disaster victims must explain why collecting the debt would cause them “serious financial hardship,” FEMA says. Recipients also must specify how they spent the money and why they can’t return the funds to FEMA.

In December, Congress approved legislation that allows FEMA to waive many of the debts. Before President Barack Obama signed it into law, FEMA had said it was required to make an effort to recover improper payments, even if the recipient wasn’t at fault.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat who was one of the provision’s sponsors, praised FEMA for “moving swiftly and aggressively” to implement a waiver plan.

“This announcement will bring great relief to many honest disaster survivors who never intended to misuse funds or take anything to which they were not entitled,” Landrieu said in a statement. “To have forced people who experienced great tragedy to pay large sums of money back to the government because of someone else’s mistake would have been incredibly unfair.”

FEMA’s collection efforts aren’t limited to the 2005 storms. The agency has mailed out more than 6,000 debt letters to survivors of other recent disasters, including floods.

About 2,500 recipients, including 930 victims of the 2005 hurricanes, had appealed their debt notices as of December. FEMA says about 30 percent of those appeals successfully erased at least some of the debt.

Davida Finger, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who has helped several people appeal their debts, said it’s “absolutely unclear” how FEMA will decide whether an improper payment resulted from a mistake by the agency or the recipient.

“There seems to be a lot of subjectivity and discretion in making these decisions,” she said.

One of Finger’s clients is David Bellinger, a 63-year-old blind man who rented an apartment in Atlanta after Katrina wrecked his New Orleans home. FEMA has asked Bellinger to pay back more than $3,200 in federal aid he received to help pay his rent. The agency claimed he received a duplication of benefits. Bellinger says the agency is mistaken, but FEMA rejected his appeal in December.

“The people who can least afford to pay this money back are being hardest-hit by this,” Finger said.

Landrieu said the waiver provision had encountered some opposition before a compromise measure was approved by Congress.

“This was not easily done,” she said. “There was some pushback about doing any forgiveness whatsoever.”

Sen. Mark Pryor, an Arkansas Democrat who wrote the provision, said FEMA has significantly improved its process for distributing disaster aid since Katrina.

“My sense is if there were a disaster today, you would not see nearly as many mistakes with FEMA,” he said.

FEMA initiated the debt-collection process in 2006, but a federal judge in New Orleans ordered the agency to suspend the effort in 2007 after a class-action lawsuit challenged FEMA’s push to recover alleged overpayments. FEMA later paid more than $2.6 million to settle the claims and reinstituted the process last year.

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“I nearly had a stroke,” recalls the 63-year-old, who moved to Atlanta after the storm wrecked his New Orleans home. “I’m totally blind. I subsist entirely on a Social Security disability check. If I have to pay this money back, it would pretty much wipe out all the savings I have.”

Many other Gulf Coast hurricane victims are in the same position, angry and frustrated at the prospect of repaying money they spent years ago as they tried to rebuild their lives.

FEMA is seeking to recover more than $385 million it says was improperly paid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. The debts, which average about $4,622 per recipient, represent slightly less than 5 percent of the roughly $8 billion that FEMA distributed after the storms. At least some of the overpayments were due to FEMA employees’ own mistakes, ranging from clerical errors to failing to interview applicants, according to congressional testimony.

But the agency says it is required by law to make an effort to recover improper payments, even if the recipient wasn’t at fault. Last week, however, Congress approved legislation that would allow FEMA to waive many of the debts. President Barack Obama signed the measure — part of a $1 trillion spending package — into law last Friday.

FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen said the agency is reviewing the law’s provisions and developing a plan to implement them. It remains to be seen how many recipients of FEMA money could benefit from the change.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat who sponsored the provision, said disaster victims shouldn’t be punished because FEMA was “dysfunctional.”

“They have significantly improved the process,” Landrieu said. “This is very unlikely to happen again.”

Racusen said the agency has implemented “strong protections” to avoid making improper payments, reducing its error rate from about 14 percent after Katrina to less than 1 percent for more recent disasters.

“We have also worked to significantly improve the recoupment process so that it is more understandable and provides due process for both disaster survivors and taxpayers,” she said in a statement.

FEMA’s collection efforts aren’t limited to the 2005 storms. The agency has mailed out more than 6,000 debt letters to survivors of other recent disasters, including floods.

Approximately 2,500 recipients, including 930 victims of the 2005 hurricanes, have appealed their debt notices. FEMA says about 30 percent of those appeals successfully erased at least some of the debt. Recipients also can ask for a waiver due to economic hardship or seek to set up a payment plan.

“It is important for any individual who has received a recoupment notice to know that these letters are the start of a conversation with FEMA, not the end,” Racusen said.

This isn’t the first time Bellinger has tangled with FEMA over funds he received to pay for renting an apartment in Atlanta. He was a plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit over the agency’s decision to end housing subsidies for storm victims and its efforts to recover alleged overpayments. FEMA later paid more than $2.6 million to settle the claims.

That case had also delayed the debt collection process that Bellinger and other storm victims are now facing. Before the settlement, a federal judge in New Orleans ordered FEMA to suspend the effort in 2007 while it drew up new guidelines for the recoupment process. FEMA reinstituted the process earlier this year.

“What a way to celebrate Christmas, knowing I’ve got another FEMA battle on my hands,” Bellinger said last week.

After Bellinger moved to Atlanta, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development covered some but not all of his rent. He says he relied on FEMA’s aid to make up the difference. FEMA claims he received a duplication of benefits, but Bellinger said the agency is mistaken.

“The fault is theirs, not mine, and they have to suffer the consequences,” he said. “I submitted everything they required. As far as I know, I did nothing wrong.”

Lubertha Haskin, a Gulfport, Miss., resident who turned 80 on Dec. 27, received about $8,000 from FEMA to repair some of Katrina’s damage to her home and replace belongings. In October, FEMA sent her a debt letter that said her insurer had covered the same costs, a claim Haskin denies.

Haskin said she hadn’t heard from the agency in five years and never suspected she could have to pay back the money.

“I was knocked for a loop,” she said. “I don’t have that kind of money. I have a lot of doctor’s bills and other bills to pay.”

Law firms and legal aid groups have volunteered to help Haskin, Bellinger and many others challenge FEMA’s recoupment efforts.

“It’s really unfair that the government waited this long to come after this lady,” said Haskin’s lawyer, Beau Cole. “They didn’t deliberately do it, but the effect is the same.”

The New Orleans office of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services, which offers free legal aid, has fielded more than 100 calls since September from people who want to challenge their FEMA recoupment letter. Rowena Jones, a lawyer for the group, said she hasn’t seen the appeals process yield any “actual results.”

“Our clients just don’t seem to be getting a fair opportunity to contest the notices and get a hearing on it,” she said.

The provision signed into law last week allows FEMA to completely waive the debt for somebody who earns less than $90,000 a year if the money was mistakenly awarded due to an error by FEMA. A debt involving fraud cannot be waived. Racusen said FEMA is “committed to applying the law to the fullest extent possible.”

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said the recoupment process is flawed. Many debt letters have been returned as “undeliverable,” meaning some people moved and don’t even know they owe money, he said.

“Most of these individuals went through a lot of trauma,” Thompson said. “For our government to all of a sudden say, ‘We made a mistake, you owe us money,’ that’s not how it should be done.”

Anyone with questions about the recoupment process, including appeals, can contact FEMA at 1-800-816-1122.

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The Grio reports:

“I should have known better than to leave for New York with that Hurricane approaching for the south for New Orleans,” she said. “Yes, I was Secretary of State. That was very much on my mind. I was one of the president’s closest advisors and the highest ranking African-American. I really do feel I let him down in the first days of Katrina.”

Rice was not the only Bush administration official on vacation at that time. Many White House staff were on summer break. Some were in Greece for a fellow staffer’s wedding. And Bush was away too, celebrating Sen. John McCain’s 69th birthday in Arizona.

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The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, accused of building substandard levees and floodwalls that failed when Katrina swamped the Gulf Coast in 2005, has spent $56 million since then developing the initial phase of a national levee inventory as required by Congress. The Corps on Thursday was releasing a database with information about nearly 14,000 miles of levees under its jurisdiction.

But the inventory doesn’t include what is believed to be more than 100,000 additional miles of levees not covered by the Corps’ safety program. Some are little more than mounds of earth piled up more than a century ago to protect farm fields. Others extend for miles and are made of concrete and steel, with sophisticated pump and drainage systems. They shield homes, businesses and infrastructure such as highways and power plants.

The National Committee on Levee Safety, established after the Katrina disaster to evaluate the system and recommend improvements, issued a report in 2009 calling for the Corps to catalog and inspect every levee so deficiencies could be fixed. But Corps officials say Congress has not provided enough authority or money to add non-federal levees to the database, a massive undertaking that would take years.

“The reality is, we don’t know how many levees are out there,” said Eric Halpin, the Army Corps’ special assistant for dam and levee safety and vice chairman of the levee safety committee. He acknowledged the inventory presently includes only about 10 percent of the likely total.

“I think we’ve done a great job putting forward a state-of-the-art tool,” Halpin said. “It’s a first step. It will be much more powerful once we can get all the data in there.”

For each levee system, the database will include its location, design and rating following one or more safety inspections.

Inspection ratings from nearly 700 of the roughly 2,000 levee systems under the Corps’ jurisdiction have been added to the database thus far, said spokesman Pete Pierce.

Of those, 77 percent had ratings of “minimally acceptable,” meaning they have “minor deficiencies” that make the levees less reliable but are not expected to seriously impair their performance. An additional 11.6 percent were rated “unacceptable,” or likely to fail during a flood, while 11.3 percent were graded as “acceptable,” or without deficiencies.

Experts say the government is moving too slowly to complete the inventory.

“We need to be really candid with the American people,” said Sam Riley Medlock, policy counsel for the Association of State Floodplain Managers and a member of the levee safety panel. “This is yet another class of infrastructure that is aging and posing risks and we’re going to have to do something about it.”

Gerald Galloway, a former Army Corps district engineer and University of Maryland engineering professor, told a Senate committee this month the levee network has “significant” problems and received an overall grade of “D minus” from the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2009. The group estimated that $50 billion worth of improvements was needed over five years.

“So today hundreds of levees, whose integrity is in question, are in place in front of communities and properties with little realistic hope of funding for inspection, repair or upgrade,” Galloway said.

Concern about the levees dates to the 1920s and 1930s, when killer floods on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers led Congress to order construction of more levees. Many were designed for the biggest flood likely to strike a particular area within 500 years or even 1,000 years.

But starting in the late 1960s, federal policies have inadvertently encouraged the building of levees according to a less protective standard, the safety committee report said. One required financially strapped local governments to help cover levee building and maintenance costs.

Relatively low death tolls from major floods in recent decades also fed complacency that ended with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the report said. Together, they killed more than 1,800 people and caused $200 billion in damages, spurring calls for a nationwide levee inventory and upgrades.

The portion of the inventory developed thus far includes data on about 13,500 of the 14,700 miles of levees covered by the Army Corps’ safety program. Data on the rest will be added by the end of the year, officials said. Many of the levees are operated and maintained by the Corps, or were built by the Corps and turned over to local officials.

John Paul Woodley Jr., who served as assistant secretary of the Army for public works during the George W. Bush administration, said the Corps has made good progress on the levee inventory but acknowledged “we’re definitely behind where everybody had hoped we’d be.”

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He writes:

I remember Hurricane Katrina.

Fortunately, I remembered it from a distance sitting in a New York City office with my eyes glued to the lobby TV. I felt sick and powerless. Less than four years earlier, I called New Orleans home for a summer. My counted blessings were all the (lifelong) friendships I developed and the special relationship I had with the NO. All I could think about were my friends and their families. I thought about Xavier University, I thought about Painters Street, I thought about every individual I came across and the spirit of love I experienced there. I thought about how fortunate I and many of us in the Northeast were for being spared that time around.

Fast forward to this weekend, I find myself sitting in a room halfway across the world in India, closely monitoring my twitter feed of friends and family, refreshing US weather and news sites and reviewing Weather HD on my iPad, I felt the same sense of powerlessness. My skype account was in full use as I kept the phone ringing trying to ensure my family and friends were well.

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According to Nagin, his outspokenness made him an easy target and a scapegoat in many situations.

“I was basically the last person standing that was one of the key leaders,” he said.

“There were open discussions about changing the social fabric of the city and very bold discussions about gentrification. I had to make a very tough decision to say that everybody had a right to return to the city of New Orleans and there was a heavy price I paid for that…”

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As the deaths and damage left by Hurricane Irene are added up, today marks the anniversary of one of the deadliest natural disasters in American history — Hurricane Katrina.

Below is a post focusing on the Lower 9th Ward and its struggle in getting back to what it once was.

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————————

NEW ORLEANS  — In New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, the grasses grow taller than people and street after street is scarred by empty decaying houses, the lives that once played out inside their walls hardly imaginable now.

St. Claude Avenue, the once moderately busy commercial thoroughfare, looks like the main street of a railroad town bypassed long ago by the interstate. Most buildings are shuttered, “For Sale” signs stuck on their sides. There aren’t many buyers. And the businesses that are open are mostly corner stores where folks buy pricey cigarettes, liquor and packaged food.

Six years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the New Orleans neighborhood that was hardest hit still looks like a ghost town. Redevelopment has been slow in coming, and the neighborhood has just 5,500 residents — one-third its pre-Katrina population.

But politicians, investors and celebrities continue to promise a better future. City leaders recently announced plans to rebuild a high school and pave the neighborhood’s roads. And actor Wendell Pierce, who stars in an HBO series about New Orleans, is backing a new supermarket for an area that hasn’t had one in 20 years.

While residents welcome the news, they remain skeptical. Promises have been dashed too many times.

“Look around you at the Katrina houses!” said Robert Stark, a 54-year-old disabled veteran, sweating in stifling August heat on a porch looking onto Flood Street. He waved at two vacant crumbling houses, like so many that dot the Lower 9th Ward.

He shook his head and added: “Look at the grass.” In many lots, fields of high grass grow in place of houses. “There ain’t nothing new down here. Nothing new … nothing new.”

That’s not completely true.

Since Katrina, the predominantly black neighborhood has been the site of rebuilding by environmental groups and thousands of volunteers. There’s now an eco-friendly community center and a cluster of more than 50 modernistic houses, built with the help of actor Brad Pitt. It sits near where the floodwall toppled on Aug. 29, 2005, killing dozens of people and swamping thousands of homes with floodwaters that reached rooftops.

Also, a charter school has been rebuilt and many of the shotgun-style homes and Creole cottages in the older part of the neighborhood, Holy Cross, are a display of bright New Orleans colors and cheery yards.

But residents of the Lower 9th Ward, downriver from the French Quarter, nevertheless feel left behind.

Other parts of New Orleans have flourished thanks to federal recovery dollars that have brought new businesses, schools and streets.

Entrepreneurship and civic engagement is up, city schools have shown test-score gains and the middle class is growing, according to a new report by the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, a group tracking the city’s recovery. Even crime — still nearly twice the national average — is being held in check and falling, the report said. Meanwhile, the Army Corps of Engineers is getting closer to finishing $14 billion in work to better shield the city from future hurricanes.

“Some of the data shows that New Orleans is rebuilding better than before,” said Allison Plyer, deputy director of the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center.

Still, Plyer said the Lower 9th Ward is among a number of low-income communities that have had difficulty rebuilding since Katrina’s flooding.

In the Lower 9th Ward, the fire station for Engine 39 hasn’t been rebuilt. Instead, the firefighters use a trailer. Schools and churches are boarded up. Scores of houses still bear the markings of search-and-rescue crews — the now familiar “X” spray painted on doors and the front of houses to designate whether a building had been searched, by whom and whether any bodies had been found inside. The only difference is they are faded now.

The lack of people makes those who’ve come back feel that their neighborhood has been forgotten, even though a steady stream of politicians came to promise to help after Katrina and millions of dollars flowed in.

Now there’s a new push to revive the neighborhood.

In recent days, city leaders have put forward plans to rebuild the Alfred Lawless High School and spend $45 million repaving most of the streets where the heaviest damage took place.

A group of investors that includes Pierce, a New Orleans native starring on the HBO show “Treme,” has announced plans to build a full-scale grocery store on the grounds of a former baseball field by 2013. Developers hope to get federal hurricane recovery low-interest and forgivable loans. If built, the 25,000-square-foot store would represent one of the first pioneering commercial investments for the Lower 9th Ward since Katrina.

Pierce said big-chain supermarkets are unable to see the potential for profit in a place like the Lower 9th Ward, where his parents lived before he was born.

“Corporate America only sees the risk side of the ledger,” he said. “I’m tired of industry standing on the sidelines. There is value here, there is wealth here… It’s pent-up demand and I feel as though it is something that can be mined.”

Not everyone is convinced.

David J. Livingston, a Wisconsin-based grocery consultant who’s studied the New Orleans market, said the Lower 9th Ward is too depopulated to support a supermarket. He questioned whether the Lower 9th Ward, cut off by an industrial canal from the rest of New Orleans, can ever be a lively spot for commerce despite the best efforts of actors Pitt and Pierce.

“All the work that Brad Pitt has done, has it really made a significant difference? Glad he did it, better than it was. But it’s still not the garden spot of New Orleans,” Livingston said, referring to the cluster of eco-friendly homes built by the Pitt-backed foundation Make It Right.

But local residents and merchants hold out hope the supermarket can help turn things around.

“Maybe some of the folks going to the supermarket would come here,” said April Lawrence, the owner of a beauty salon who took a chance and opened in 2009 on Dauphine Street. “Today, I have just one client,” she said glumly. Unless business picks up, she said, she will have to close.

Down the street, regulars sat outside on the sidewalk in front of Mercedes’ Place, a bar and video poker spot, chatting, drinking and smoking. For them, anything would be better than the options they have now: Drive miles to get something decent to cook up at home.

“It’s needed!” Lynette Gibson said emphatically and loudly. She helps her 72-year-old mother, Mercedes, run the bar.

She shook her head at the thought of the handful of gas stations and convenience stores on the main streets. “It’s limited,” she said. “They only satisfy neighborhood people who drink.”

Roosevelt Johnson Sr., a 51-year-old disabled veteran, stood outside his house and looked at the empty grass field where the grocery store would be built.

“With them bringing a supermarket, it might increase property values,” he reasoned. “It might bring some normalcy back here. Make it like any other neighborhood where you go 10 minutes to the supermarket.”

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Former officer Robert Faulcon, Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and retired Sgt. Arthur Kaufman were convicted of charges stemming from the cover-up of the shootings. All but Kaufman were convicted of civil rights violations stemming from the shootings. Kaufman, who investigated the shootings, was charged only in the cover-up.

The trial was a high-profile test of the Justice Department’s effort to clean up a police department marred by a reputation for corruption and brutality. A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes. Most of the cases center on actions during the aftermath of the Aug. 29, 2005, storm, which plunged the flooded city into a state of lawlessness and desperation.

The mother of 17-year-old James Brissette, one of the people killed on the bridge, said she was relieved by the verdict after “a long, hard six years.”

His mother, Sherrel Johnson, said she would now try to move on but lamented what her son would miss out on.

“For him there will be no prom, no baby, no nothing. My child will never have nothing,” she said.

The family of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old disabled man fatally shot on the bridge, said in a statement the family had waited six years to “find out what really happened on that bridge.”

Madison’s sister Jackie Madison Brown read the statement, which also said that after an event like Katrina, “all citizens, no matter what color or what class, deserve protection.”

After the verdict was read, Justice Department prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein became emotional, hugging the families of Madison and Brissette and holding hands with two of Madison’s sisters.

Sentencing was tentatively scheduled for Dec. 14. Kaufman remains free on bond until he is sentenced. The other four officers already are jailed and face possible life prison sentences.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said the verdict was critical to the city’s efforts to root out corruption. He said it sends a message that “public officials, and especially law enforcement officers, that they will be held accountable and that any abuse of power will have serious consequences.”

Defense attorney Roger Kitchens, who represented Villavaso, said he believed negative media coverage of the case tainted jurors.

“At this point, I don’t think it’s possible for a New Orleans police officer to get a fair trial in the city of New Orleans. And I don’t think they got one today,” he said.

Prosecutors contended during the five-week federal trial that officers shot unarmed people without justification and without warning, killing two and wounding four others on Sept. 4, 2005, then embarked on a cover-up involving made-up witnesses, falsified reports and a planted gun.

Defense attorneys countered that the officers were returning fire and reasonably believed their lives were in danger as they rushed to respond to another officer’s distress call less than a week after Katrina struck.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Theodore Carter said in closing arguments Tuesday that police had no justification for shooting unarmed, defenseless people trying to cross the bridge in search of food and help mere days after Katrina struck.

“It was unreasonable for these officers to fire even one shot, let alone dozens,” he had said.

Defense attorneys argued, however, that police were shot at on the bridge before they returned fire.

“None of these people intentionally decided to go out there and cause people harm,” said Timothy Meche, Villavaso’s lawyer. He said they did their best, operating under “terrible, horrible circumstances” after Katrina.

Faulcon, the only defendant to testify, said he was “paralyzed with fear” when he shot and killed Madison, as he chased him and his brother, Lance Madison. Faulcon didn’t dispute that he shot an unarmed man in the back, but he testified that he had believed Ronald Madison was armed and posed a threat.

Prosecutors contended at trial that Kaufman retrieved a gun from his home weeks after the shootings and turned it in as evidence, trying to pass it off as a gun belonging to Lance Madison. He also is accused of fabricating two nonexistent witnesses to the shootings.

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Jeffrey Lehrmann, a government witness in the federal trial of five current or former officers, said he saw Sgt. Arthur “Archie” Kaufman retrieve a gun from his home several weeks after the deadly shootings on the Danziger Bridge. Kaufman later turned the gun in as evidence, claiming he found it under the bridge a day after the 2005 shootings that left two people dead and four others wounded.

Lehrmann said Kaufman instructed him to fill out paperwork that claimed the gun belonged to Lance Madison, whose mentally disabled brother, Ronald, was shot and killed on the bridge. Lance Madison was arrested on attempted murder charges and held for more than three weeks before a judge freed him.

Lehrmann said Kaufman, his supervisor, had grown concerned because the judge who freed Madison didn’t believe Kaufman’s testimony at the hearing.

“Therefore, we needed a gun,” Lehrmann said.

Lehrmann said Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen joined him and Kaufman when they drove to Kaufman’s house to retrieve a gun. Kaufman emerged from his garage carrying the gun in a brown paper bag, calling it a “ham sandwich,” Lehrmann said.

Kaufman’s attorney, Stephen London, suggested during cross-examination that Lehrmann was trying to shift blame to his client and has changed his story over time. Lehrmann accused London of “nitpicking,” while London chided Lehrmann for smiling during his testimony.

“My client is on trial. Is that funny?” London asked.

“No, it’s not funny at all,” he responded.

On Sept. 4, 2005, Lehrmann drove himself to the Danziger Bridge after a truckload of officers responded to another officer’s distress call and began shooting. He isn’t accused of firing his gun that day.

Lehrmann said he handcuffed Ronald Madison on the west side of the bridge after he was shot, then felt badly about it when another officer told him he already was dead.

Lehrmann said the officers immediately afterward started to “get their stories straight.”

“We had a lot of problems because it was a bad shoot,” he said.

“What was the goal of the cover-up?” prosecutor Cindy Chung asked.

“Protect the officers from legal ramifications,” he said.

Lehrmann said he helped Kaufman with an initial, 32-page report that was bounced back by Lt. Michael Lohman, who also has pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up.

“Lt. Lohman became irate with Archie because he thought Archie’s report was garbage,” Lehrmann recalled.

Lehrmann said the false accounts of what officers did on the bridge continually changed as they honed their cover story.

“The lies changed whenever we needed to change them,” he said.

Lehrmann said he made up the name “Lakeisha” for a phony witness to the shootings when Kaufman called out, “Hey, somebody give me a name!” He said they also fabricated a witness named “James Youngman” and reported he lived at a large, storm-damaged apartment complex where it would be hard to prove the witness didn’t exist.

Weeks after the shooting, Lehrmann said he and Bowen returned to the bridge a day before crime scene technicians were to collect evidence. Lehrmann said he saw Bowen kick shell casings off the bridge where police shot several people.

Gisevius, Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and former officer Robert Faulcon are on trial for charges stemming from the shootings. Kaufman is charged in the alleged cover-up.

Lehrmann, who already has been sentenced to three years in prison, is one of five former officers who pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up. He is the fourth of those officers to testify at the trial, now entering its third week.

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Jeffrey Lehrmann, a government witness in the federal trial of five current or former officers, said he saw Sgt. Arthur “Archie” Kaufman retrieve a gun from his home several weeks after the deadly shootings on the Danziger Bridge. Kaufman later turned the gun in as evidence, claiming he found it under the bridge a day after the 2005 shootings that left two people dead and four others wounded.

Lehrmann said Kaufman instructed him to fill out paperwork that claimed the gun belonged to Lance Madison, whose mentally disabled brother, Ronald, was shot and killed on the bridge. Lance Madison was arrested on attempted murder charges and held for more than three weeks before a judge freed him.

Lehrmann said Kaufman, his supervisor, had grown concerned because the judge who freed Madison didn’t believe Kaufman’s testimony at the hearing.

“Therefore, we needed a gun,” Lehrmann said.

Lehrmann said Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen joined him and Kaufman when they drove to Kaufman’s house to retrieve a gun. Kaufman emerged from his garage carrying the gun in a brown paper bag, calling it a “ham sandwich,” Lehrmann said.

Kaufman’s attorney, Stephen London, suggested during cross-examination that Lehrmann was trying to shift blame to his client and has changed his story over time. Lehrmann accused London of “nitpicking,” while London chided Lehrmann for smiling during his testimony.

“My client is on trial. Is that funny?” London asked.

“No, it’s not funny at all,” he responded.

On Sept. 4, 2005, Lehrmann drove himself to the Danziger Bridge after a truckload of officers responded to another officer’s distress call and began shooting. He isn’t accused of firing his gun that day.

Lehrmann said he handcuffed Ronald Madison on the west side of the bridge after he was shot, then felt badly about it when another officer told him he already was dead.

Lehrmann said the officers immediately afterward started to “get their stories straight.”

“We had a lot of problems because it was a bad shoot,” he said.

“What was the goal of the cover-up?” prosecutor Cindy Chung asked.

“Protect the officers from legal ramifications,” he said.

Lehrmann said he helped Kaufman with an initial, 32-page report that was bounced back by Lt. Michael Lohman, who also has pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up.

“Lt. Lohman became irate with Archie because he thought Archie’s report was garbage,” Lehrmann recalled.

Lehrmann said the false accounts of what officers did on the bridge continually changed as they honed their cover story.

“The lies changed whenever we needed to change them,” he said.

Lehrmann said he made up the name “Lakeisha” for a phony witness to the shootings when Kaufman called out, “Hey, somebody give me a name!” He said they also fabricated a witness named “James Youngman” and reported he lived at a large, storm-damaged apartment complex where it would be hard to prove the witness didn’t exist.

Weeks after the shooting, Lehrmann said he and Bowen returned to the bridge a day before crime scene technicians were to collect evidence. Lehrmann said he saw Bowen kick shell casings off the bridge where police shot several people.

Gisevius, Bowen, Officer Anthony Villavaso and former officer Robert Faulcon are on trial for charges stemming from the shootings. Kaufman is charged in the alleged cover-up.

Lehrmann, who already has been sentenced to three years in prison, is one of five former officers who pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up. He is the fourth of those officers to testify at the trial, now entering its third week.

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The jury heard a vastly different account of the encounter on the Danziger Bridge from lawyers for five current or former officers charged in the deadly shootings. Defense attorneys said their clients feared for their lives and were justified in using deadly force.

“They stayed,” said Paul Fleming, a lawyer for former officer Robert Faulcon. “They didn’t desert. They didn’t go work other jobs. They stayed and did the best they could.”

Justice Department attorney Bobbi Bernstein said police plotted to plant a gun, fabricate witnesses and falsify reports to cover up “atrocities” and tried to use Katrina’s chaotic conditions as an excuse for gaps in their investigation.

“They lied because they knew they committed a crime,” Bernstein said. “They lied because they knew police officers were not allowed to shoot first and ask questions later.”

Faulcon, Sgts. Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen and Officer Anthony Villavaso are charged in the shootings, which killed 17-year-old James Brissette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison, who was severely mentally disabled. Retired Sgts. Arthur Kaufman and Gerard Dugue are charged in the alleged cover-up, but Dugue will be tried separately from the other five who were indicted last year on federal civil rights charges.

Five other former officers already have pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up to make the shootings appear justified. They are cooperating with the government and are expected to testify during the trial, which could last up to eight weeks.

The shootings broke out on the morning of Sept. 4, 2005, less than a week after the storm’s landfall. A group of police officers working out of a makeshift station piled into a Budget rental truck and drove to the bridge after hearing a radio call that other officers had taken fire.

Bernstein said Brissette was walking on the east side of the bridge with a friend, Jose Holmes, and several of Holmes’ relatives, when the officers pulled up in the truck and started firing at them, sending them scrambling for cover behind a concrete barrier. Holmes was lying wounded on the ground when Bowen walked up, pointed a gun at his stomach and fired a shot, according to the prosecutor.

“Jose clenched his stomach, and he reminded himself to breathe. And then Jose began to pray,” Bernstein said.

Holmes survived, but Brissette died on the east side of the bridge. On the west side, Faulcon allegedly shot Madison in the back with a shotgun as he and his brother, Lance Madison, were running away from the gunfire. Ronald Madison was lying on the ground when Bowen walked over and asked a fellow officer, “Is that one of them?” before he repeatedly stomped on the dying man, Bernstein said.

“Those words will tell you why he did what he did,” Bernstein said.

The officers have claimed they opened fire only after being shot at. They point to testimony less than a month after the shootings by Lance Madison, who said a group of teenagers started firing at him and his brother before they encountered police.

Fleming said the officers acted reasonably under dangerous circumstances, believing other officers already had been shot on the bridge before they arrived.

“Two officers dead or dying was what these officers had in their minds when they raced out there,” Fleming said.

Bernstein said the officers’ accounts of their actions, which they gave in taped interviews with police investigators, are contradicted by grainy footage shot by an NBC cameraman who was filming the incident.

“That tape is going to be an important piece of evidence for you,” she told jurors.

Police recovered no guns from the bridge that day, but Kaufman allegedly retrieved a gun from his garage and turned it in to the department’s evidence room six weeks after the shootings, trying to pass it off as a gun found at the scene. Bernstein described the cover-up as “ridiculously sloppy.”

“They were cavalier because they didn’t think they had to bother dotting any i’s or crossing any t’s,” she said.

NEW ORLEANS — On a brisk January morning in 2007, seven New Orleans police officers waded through a crowd of cheering supporters outside the city’s jail to face charges stemming from a deadly encounter with residents on a bridge in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. Before they were booked, the grim-faced officers accepted hugs and handshakes from fellow cops who shouted, “Heroes! Heroes!”

Three of the officers who received the hero’s welcome have admitted they were concealing a dark secret the day they surrendered, one so lurid it stunned a city with a long history of police corruption.

The other four members of the so-called Danziger Seven — named after the bridge where police shot and killed two unarmed people and wounded four others — and another police investigator go on trial Wednesday in a federal case that will rehash the most infamous chapter in the city’s awful post-Katrina annals, and severely test efforts to mend the department’s frayed relationship with the public.

One officer is accused of fatally shooting a mentally disabled man in the back before a sergeant stomped on him. Prosecutors say the same sergeant, armed with an assault rifle, fired on wounded and unarmed people lying on the ground. All are accused of participating in a cover-up that allegedly included a plot to plant a gun, fabricate witnesses and falsify reports.

“It’s going to be a painful process for this whole community to see the depths to which the police department had fallen to,” said Rafael Goyeneche, head of an independent police watchdog group in New Orleans. “But I also think it’s absolutely necessary to bring officers who betrayed the public trust to justice.”

The group was dubbed the Danziger Seven after they were charged in state court with murder or attempted murder in December 2006, but a judge threw out all the charges in August 2008. Federal authorities then launched their own investigation a month later, which led to charges against the Danziger Seven and four others.

The Danziger Bridge shootings broke out the morning of Sept. 4, 2005, less than a week after flooding from broken levees plunged New Orleans into chaos. After hearing a radio call that other officers were taking fire, a group of officers working from a makeshift station piled into a rental truck and drove to the bridge, which connects two neighborhoods hit hardest by flooding.

Prosecutors’ account of what happened next is outlined in court filings that accompanied guilty pleas last year by five former officers, including Danziger Seven members Michael Hunter, Robert Barrios and Ignatius Hills. All five admitted participating in the cover-up.

Hunter, who drove the rental truck, says he fired warning shots when he saw a handful of people casually walking on the east side of the bridge. The people scattered and took cover behind a concrete barrier. As the truck stopped, an unidentified sergeant allegedly fired an assault rifle at a man who raised his head above the barrier but didn’t appear to be armed.

Hunter says he exited the truck and saw the sergeant and at least one other officer firing at the barrier. They initially complied with his order to stop shooting, as he believed there was no threat. But the sergeant “suddenly leaned over the concrete barrier, held out his assault rifle, and, in a sweeping motion, fired repeatedly at the civilians lying wounded on the ground,” according to an April 2010 court filing.

Police shot and killed 17-year-old James Brissette on the east side of the bridge. Hunter hitched a ride with a state trooper to the west side of the bridge, where they saw Lance Madison and his 40-year-old mentally disabled brother, Ronald, running away.

As the trooper’s car stopped, an unnamed officer fired a shotgun at Ronald Madison’s back. As Madison lay dying on the pavement, the sergeant repeatedly kicked and stomped on him “with as much force as he could muster,” the court filing says. Prosecutors say neither brother was armed.

Yet Lance Madison was arrested on charges he tried to kill officers. He was jailed for three weeks but released without being indicted.

The officers have claimed they opened fire only after being shot at. They point to testimony less than a month after the shootings by Lance Madison, who said a group of teenagers fired at him and his brother before they encountered police.

Prosecutors, however, claim police immediately embarked on a brazen cover-up because they knew they had shot unarmed residents.

Jeffrey Lehrmann, a former detective who pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up, says he helped craft and document false stories about the shootings, using Katrina’s hardships as an excuse for gaps in the probe.

The remaining four Danziger Seven members — seargents Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, officer Anthony Villavaso and former officer Robert Faulcon — will be tried on charges related to the shootings.

Two other officers — retired seargents Arthur Kaufman and Gerard Dugue, who investigated the shootings — are charged with participating in a cover-up. Dugue will be tried separately.

Henry Dean, a New Orleans police commander and president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, said the rank-and-file’s support for the accused officers hasn’t waned since the day they were greeted with applause outside the jail.

“The way it’s expressed has changed, that’s all,” Dean said.

But he conceded the Danziger case and several other Justice Department probes of alleged police corruption in New Orleans have eroded the public’s trust.

“It has made their job a little more difficult,” Dean said.

A judge has refused to move the trial despite defense claims that the officers can’t get a fair trial in New Orleans because of widespread media coverage of this and other cases, including last year’s trial in the post-Katrina death of Henry Glover, 31. A jury convicted a former officer of manslaughter for shooting Glover and found another guilty of burning his body in a car.

The judge also has ruled out any general testimony about the chaos after the storm, when helicopters were plucking stranded residents from rooftops, looting was rampant and bodies littered the city. Many officers abandoned their posts. Those who stayed endured harsh conditions, with little sleep and few ways to communicate.

Andrea Celestine, a sister of Danziger shooting victim Brissette, said months passed before her family could confirm he was dead. And they didn’t know police were responsible until a New Orleans prosecutor approached them about a year after Katrina. She said her mother has waited to hold a funeral until the trial is done.

“It’s just so senseless,” she said. “It’s almost like they were using them for target practice.”

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As a new hurricane season begins Wednesday, FEMA is working to determine how much money it overpaid or mistakenly awarded to victims of the destructive 2005 hurricane season. The agency is reviewing more than $600 million given to roughly 154,000 victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and is poised to demand that some return money.

FEMA already has sent letters to thousands of victims of other disasters, asking them to return more than $22 million. Letters to victims of the 2005 hurricanes could go out in a matter of months, but it’s too soon to tell how many people will be told to repay or how much money is at stake.

The effort isn’t sitting well with victims who spent the money years ago and who could need help again if another powerful storm hits. It’s of little consolation that FEMA says procedural changes since 2005 mean future disaster victims aren’t likely to have to deal with large recalls of cash.

Government forecasters are expecting an above average Atlantic storm season, with three to six major hurricanes that have winds of 111 mph or higher. While no hurricane that strong has made landfall since 2005, forecasters have warned that residents shouldn’t count on that streak to continue.

“When you get these high levels of activity the likelihood of a hurricane striking the U.S. goes up quite a bit,” said Gerry Bell, lead seasonal hurricane forecaster at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center in Washington.

Paul Wegener, whose New Orleans home flooded up to the gutters after Katrina, felt short-changed when FEMA gave him a $30,000 grant for a house that wound up costing more than $566,000 to rebuild. He applied for more through the state’s Road Home program but was told he didn’t qualify. The thought of having to return some of his federal aid only compounds his frustration.

“They’ll have to pry it from my dead hands if they try,” the 75-year-old said.

Under political pressure to help residents after Katrina, FEMA relaxed its safeguards and paid millions so victims could pay for food, clothing, shelter and medicine and also get started on home repairs.

But that allowed thousands of improper and fraudulent payments. FEMA employees awarded money without interviewing applicants or inspecting property and made errors that ranged from recording incorrect banking information to failing to check whether insurance had already covered damage, according to congressional testimony.

The 154,000 cases under review account for less than 10 percent of the $7 billion that FEMA has given to victims of the 2005 hurricanes through its individual assistance program. The recoupment effort doesn’t apply to other big-dollar disaster aid programs, like Road Home, which was financed by a congressional block grant.

While hundreds have been convicted of hurricane-related fraud, FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen said many of the cases under review involve mistakes by agency employees or the recipients themselves. Some payments will be deemed proper, some could be referred for fraud investigations and the rest will get letters telling them to pay back improper payments caused by human error, according to Racusen.

Luisa Mejia, 28, was living in an apartment in Metairie, a New Orleans suburb, when Katrina drove her family out of town.

“We left with nothing but important papers and maybe two sets of clothes,” she recalls. “We were in Atlanta with no money, living in a home with 40 people.”

All they got from FEMA was a check for $1,200, which they used to buy clothes and food. Six years later, Mejia can’t understand why FEMA would ask residents to pay for its employees’ mistakes.

“I didn’t get the type of money that would make me rich from Katrina,” she said. “For people who were honest like me, it’s crazy.”

FEMA’s attempts to collect Katrina and Rita overpayments already have sputtered once. Residents who lost homes filed a class-action lawsuit in 2007 challenging the denial of their housing aid and the recoupment process. The lawsuit argued that FEMA’s debt collection efforts were full of errors, based on vague standards and without hearings that would ensure fair treatment.

A judge ordered the agency to suspend the debt collection in 2007, while the lawsuit was pending. FEMA responded by withdrawing all debt notices sent to Katrina and Rita victims and drawing up new guidelines that the agency says will give victims clearer explanations and more opportunities to appeal.

With those guidelines finally approved this year, FEMA started reviewing its backlog of potentially improper payments.

“Under our current leadership, strong protections have been put in place to greatly reduce the error rate of improper disaster payments,” Racusen said in a statement. The agency said it has slashed its error rate involving disaster payments from 14.5 percent after Katrina to about 3 percent in 2009.

Critics say the initiative could hurt thousands still struggling to recover, and they doubt whether much of the money would be collected. They also predicted court challenges.

“People used this money to survive,” said Davida Finger, a law professor at Loyola University in New Orleans who represented plaintiffs in the class-action case. “We don’t want people to have to give money back that they simply needed for rent and food.”

FEMA says it is bound by law to try to collect improper payments, but lawmakers have sponsored legislation that would authorize the agency to waive debts if they resulted from an error by FEMA. A Senate committee approved the bill Thursday. No vote by the full Senate has been scheduled.

“Most of the families facing recoupment are honest disaster survivors, facing incredible challenges, who used funds for legitimate and urgent disaster-related needs, and who never intended to accept money to which they were not entitled,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Louisiana Democrat who co-sponsored the bill.

The FEMA letters will give individuals at least 30 days to pay back money and explain their ability to appeal, to apply for a hardship waiver or to seek a compromise.

Diane Ridgley, 56, a plaintiff in the 2007 lawsuit, recalled getting a letter from FEMA demanding repayment of nearly $17,000, money she used to replace personal belongings and pay for rent after Katrina destroyed her New Orleans duplex. FEMA told her she should have been ineligible because she listed a family friend with whom she evacuated – but did not live – as a member of her household on her application.

Ridgley claimed FEMA employees told her to list him that way, but she received a series of confusing letters and denials when she appealed. She said she believes she has finally proven she was eligible, but has kept all of her paperwork in case FEMA comes calling again.

“I don’t want nobody coming back on me telling me I gotta pay money,” said Ridgley, who recently was laid off her job as a hospital housekeeper. “I know people were doing all kinds of wrong things at the moment. It was desperate times. But that doesn’t give them the right to come back six years later.”

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NEW ORLEANS — Ex-New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin is releasing a memoir in June about his experiences dealing with Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and its aftermath.

He sent an e-mail and Twitter notes Tuesday about the book, “Katrina’s Secrets: Storms after the Storm.”

Nagin’s press release says the book will be released June 8 “via Amazon” and will discuss “institutional issues of race and class that secretly conspired to control and slow down the recovery.”

The Times-Picayune reported Tuesday that Nagin said in January he hadn’t decided whether to write a Katrina memoir.

Publicist Pat Heno-Smith did not immediately answer a call and e-mail.

Nagin is perhaps best-known for his desperate public plea to federal officials to “get off your asses and do something” as the city stood under water.

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Is It Safe? NASA Reusing A Fuel Tank That Was Damaged During Katrina

The pumpkin-colored tank now has 103 patches.

It also has a special plaque to remind people that this tank went “through the eye of a hurricane,” said Jeff Pilet, chief engineer for tank maker Lockheed Martin.

“It was a very trying time, but here we are celebrating,” Pilet said at Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday.

Article continue after gallery:

Lockheed Martin and NASA spent eight months examining and repairing the massive external tank, making it ready for Friday’s launch. It will be the oldest fuel tank to launch. The tank had been finished and in line for launch when the 2003 Columbia accident occurred. Foam shed from the fuel tank during liftoff and damaged Columbia’s left wing. That led to a redesign of the fuel tank’s insulation, delaying tank No. 122 by a few years.

Then Katrina hit, peeling a bit off the roof of the giant building that sheltered the fuel tank. Luckily, the debris from the roof only hit the half of the tank that is away from the shuttle and “less risky,” Pilet said. He also said much of the tank was shielded because of scaffolding.

“The damage really wasn’t that bad,” Pilet said.

Still, engineers repaired the nicks in the foam and a dented metal piece that connects the two inner tanks. The biggest gouge in foam was 15 inches by 20 inches. Pilet said he has “high confidence with the repairs we’ve applied” and NASA’s chief fuel tank engineer Ken Welzyn agreed.

Pilet said some foam could still fall from the tank during liftoff, mostly because it is an older tank retrofitted from the earlier design. But the foam that may fall would be so late in the launch that it wouldn’t cause any damage to the shuttle, he said.

The tank – 154 feet tall and 27 feet in diameter – is the only major part of the shuttle system that doesn’t get reused, falling into the Indian Ocean after the launch. It holds more than half a million gallons of supercooled liquid oxygen and hydrogen, kept cold by more than 2 tons of insulating foam. When filled, the tank weighs nearly 1.7 million pounds.

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NEW ORLEANS — Data reported by the Census Bureau on Thursday shows that the city of New Orleans is 29 percent smaller than it was a decade ago.

The Census Bureau reported on Thursday that 343,829 people were living in the city of New Orleans on April 1, 2010, four years and seven months after it was virtually emptied by the floodwaters that followed the hurricane.

The numbers portray a significantly smaller city than in the previous census, in 2000, though it should be said that New Orleans had been steadily shrinking even then. In 1990, it was the 24th-biggest city in the country, in 2000, the 31st, and now it has surely dropped from the top 50.

The latest figure is lower than estimates cited widely by many here in recent months. It is lower, by roughly 10,000, than the official census estimate in the summer of 2009.

“It’s not an unqualified good thing to have big numbers,” said Mark VanLandingham, a professor at Tulane University who has expressed frustration with frequent calls from local officials, sometimes successful, for the Census Bureau to raise the city’s population estimate. “It made it very difficult to figure out what was actually going on.”

Read more at NYtimes.com

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New Orleans once had more than 23,000 trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency since the August 2005 storm, and for many people still living in them, they are akin to permanent homes. These residents say they will find it hard to make the city’s deadline.

Edwin Weber Jr., 62, lives with his brother in a trailer crammed with stuff. He was seething at a “notice of violation” letter taped to his door shortly before Christmas.

The letter said he would be fined — up to $500 a day — unless he took “immediate action” to move out. He said the notice was “worthy of Ebenezer Scrooge himself.”

Read more at TheGrio.com

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BILOXI, Miss. — Five years after wandering away in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, a gray and white cat named Scrub has been reunited with his Mississippi family.

The Humane Society of South Mississippi says Scrub was identified by an implanted microchip. The 7-year-old cat was brought to the shelter by a Gulfport woman who’d fed him as a stray the past couple of months but worried about his safety during a cold snap.

Scrub’s owner, Jennifer Noble, tells The Sun Herald newspaper that she was skeptical at first when she received a call from the shelter. But by the end of the first night back, Scrub had snuggled in bed with one of her boys.

The woman who’d been feeding him lives about 15 miles away. Noble says Scrub is in excellent condition.

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Hunter also was ordered to pay a $2,500 fine and serve three years’ supervised release. His sentence will begin in March 2011.

Judge Sarah Vance said that the kind of behavior displayed by multiple New Orleans officers on Danziger Bridge less than a week after Hurricane Katrina was “poisonous.”

“It breeds mistrust, cynicism … and the antidote is punishment that will deter others,” Vance said, according to CNN New Orleans affiliate WWL.

Read entire article at CNN.com

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NEW ORLEANS – A retired New Orleans police lieutenant accused of obstructing a federal probe of a deadly police shooting after Hurricane Katrina admitted Wednesday that he “made mistakes,” but denied trying to cover up the shooting up or lie to the FBI about the case.

Robert Italiano oversaw the detectives’ bureau in the district where 31-year-old Henry Glover was fatally shot by an officer outside a strip mall on Sept. 2, 2005, before two other officers allegedly burned Glover’s body in a car.

Italiano and Lt. Travis McCabe are charged with writing and submitting a false report to impede the federal probe of Glover’s death.

But Italiano testified at his trial that he didn’t do anything to falsify a report and insists he told the FBI the truth about what he knew about the case.

“I’ve never covered up anything for a police officer in 37 years,” said Italiano, 61, who retired from the department in 2006.

He is one of five current or former officers charged in Glover’s death being tried in federal court. A former officer, David Warren, is charged with shooting Glover without justification. Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann and Officer Gregory McRae are charged with burning Glover’s body and beating men who took Glover to a school that police were using after the storm.

Read entire article at FoxNews.com

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NEW ORLEANS (Fox News)– The chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina offers no excuse for the actions of five current or former police officers being tried in the fatal police shooting of a man whose burned body was found in a car in September 2005, a federal prosecutor told jurors Wednesday.

In her opening statement, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracey Knight said Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann and Officer Gregory McRae burned the body of Henry Glover to destroy evidence in the shooting death of the 31-year-old man days after the hurricane devastated New Orleans. Knight also accused former Lt. Robert Italiano and Lt. Travis McCabe of falsifying a report to make it appear as if a former officer, David Warren, was justified in shooting Glover.

Knight suggested that Katrina, which smashed some of the city’s levees and stranded thousands of people in the flooded city for days, emboldened the officers.

“They thought no one was watching and no one would care about Henry Glover, but they were wrong,” Knight told jurors.

McRae’s lawyer, Frank DeSalvo, told jurors his client was under stress from Katrina’s harsh conditions when he made a “very bad decision” to toss a flare in the car and burn Glover’s body.

“He didn’t fathom that he was violating anybody’s civil rights,” DeSalvo said.

The Justice Department’s civil rights division has opened several probes of alleged misconduct by New Orleans police, resulting in charges this year against 20 current or former officers. Its investigation of Glover’s death is the first of those cases to be tried.

Read entire article at FoxNews.com

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Chicago (AP)-– George W. Bush recounted the mistakes of his presidency on Oprah Winfrey’s talk show as he launched a book tour to promote his just-released memoir “Decision Points.”

The former president said he still feels “sick about” the fact no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. His response to Hurricane Katrina could have been quicker, he said, and he should have landed Air Force One two days after the storm instead of viewing the destruction through the plane’s window. And he said he didn’t see the financial meltdown coming.

The former president appeared Tuesday in a taped episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” Writing the memoir, he said, “was an easy process” that has kept him busy.

“A lot of people don’t think I can read, much less write,” Bush joked on the program.

The world is better off without Saddam Hussein, Bush said, even though the invasion that toppled the Iraqi leader was based on faulty intelligence about the existence of weapons of mass destruction.

“When we didn’t find weapons I felt terrible about it, sick about it and still do, because a lot of the case in removing Saddam Hussein was based upon weapons of mass destruction,” Bush said. He added that Hussein was “equally dangerous” without WMDs.

On Katrina, Bush said he didn’t land Air Force One to view the submerged New Orleans up close because he was worried about taking resources away from rescue efforts.

“I shouldn’t have flown over and looked. I made a mistake. I should have landed,” Bush said. “I didn’t realize a picture of me looking out would look like I didn’t give a darn.”

Continuing to discuss Katrina, Bush said he should have sent federal troops to help with security in New Orleans sooner, but was waiting for authority from Louisiana state government.

Bush flared against critics who called his Katrina response racist. Winfrey reminded him that rapper Kanye West said during a 2005 telethon for hurricane survivors that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”

“That really hurt,” Bush said. “You can disagree with my politics, but don’t ever accuse me of being a racist. … I can see how the perception would be Bush didn’t care, but to accuse me of being a racist is disgusting.”

Bush said he wasn’t alone in his failure to foresee the financial meltdown and defended his administration’s decision to invest in failing banks in late 2008 to stabilize the financial system.

“I believe it helped save the country,” Bush said.

Bush had nothing negative to say about President Barack Obama, whom Winfrey famously supported in 2008.

“I didn’t like it when people criticized me,” Bush said. “And so you’re not going to see me out there chirping away (at Obama). And I want our president to succeed. I love our country.”

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In an interview with The Box Houston, Kanye West gave his response to George Bush’s criticism and compared what George Bush went through to what we went through after he interrupted Taylor Swift at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards.

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Bush: “Yeah. I still feel that way, As you read those words,” I felt ‘em when I heard ‘em, felt ‘em when I wrote ‘em and I felt ‘em when I’m listening to ‘em.”

Lauer: “I wonder if some people are going to read that, now that you’ve written it, and they might give you some heat for that. And the reason is this –”

Bush: “Don’t care,”

Lauer: “Well, here’s the reason, You’re not saying that the worst moment in your presidency was watching the misery in Louisiana. You’re saying it was when someone insulted you because of that.”

Bush: “I also make it clear that the misery in Louisiana affected me deeply as well. There’s a lot of tough moments in the book. And it was a disgusting moment, pure and simple.”

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Two New Orleans police officers were charged Thursday with lying under oath about the shooting death of a man outside the city’s convention center in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, the latest case generated by a broad Justice Department probe of the police department.

Officers Ronald Mitchell and Ray Jones were patrolling the area where thousands had sought refuge and were later stranded when resident Danny Brumfield tried to flag the police down, according to the indictment. Brumfield either jumped on the car’s hood or was struck by the vehicle, according to the indictment, and Mitchell shot Brumfield.

Mitchell claimed he shot and killed Brumfield after he lunged at him with a “shiny object” and testified that he thought Brumfield was armed with a knife.
The federal grand jury’s six-count indictment charges the officer knew Brumfield didn’t have an object, but the indictment doesn’t explain why prosecutors believe the officers lied about it.

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The indictment charges the officers with obstruction of justice and perjury for allegedly giving false testimony in a lawsuit filed by Brumfield’s wife. Both officers face maximum sentences of 20 years in prison if convicted of the charges.

The Justice Department’s civil rights division is investigating a wide range of misconduct by New Orleans police officers, mostly in Katrina’s immediate aftermath. With Thursday’s indictment, 20 current or former officers have been charged in the probes so far.

Lawyers for the officers didn’t immediately return calls for comment. U.S. Attorney Jim Letten declined to comment on the indictment.

Richard Root, a lawyer for the Brumfield family, said he was puzzled Mitchell wasn’t previously charged in the shooting. Eyewitnesses said Brumfield didn’t do anything to provoke the officers, according to Root.

“I still believe he was murdered,” Root said. “I’m not criticizing (prosecutors) in any way. I just can’t explain their thought process.”

Brumfield and some of his relatives were among those at the convention center after the Aug. 29, 2005, storm.

Mitchell and Jones were patrolling the area less than a week later, with Jones behind the wheel, when Brumfield approached. Mitchell shot Brumfield in the left rear shoulder while he was on the hood or sliding off of it, according to the indictment.

During his June 2007 deposition, Mitchell testified he exited the patrol car and checked Brumfield’s vital signs. Jones testified he immediately stopped the patrol car after the shooting and got out to “scan the crowd” while Mitchell checked on Brumfield.

The indictment, however, said the officers “immediately fled the scene” after the shooting.

Brumfield’s family settled a lawsuit against the city in July 2008 for $400,000.

Africa Brumfield, Danny’s niece, said the family doesn’t find any solace in the indictment, but and doesn’t “wish any harm” on the officers.

“We simply wanted an apology and an acknowledgment that what they did wasn’t right,” she said. “Instead, they tried to destroy my uncle’s character. They tried to destroy his name.”

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Former New Orleans Police Officer Jeffrey Lehrmann was sentenced Wednesday to three years in federal prison for his part in the cover-up of the Danziger Bridge shootings, our partners at the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported today.

Lehrmann is one of 11 officers who have been charged in the Sept. 4, 2005 incident, in which police officers opened fire on unarmed civilians, killing two and wounding four others. He was the first of five officers to cooperate with federal investigators.

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Lehrmann pleaded guilty in February to concealing a crime, after coming forward and disclosing his role in an extensive cover-up that followed the shootings.

According to the bill of information filed by the U.S. Department of Justice, Lehrmann “participated in the creation of false reports” and provided “false information to investigating agents.” He is the first to be sentenced in the case and is expected to testify in the trial of other officers.

Read entire article at RawStory.com

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Jordan Flaherty is a New Orleans-based journalist whom is attempting to expose Katrina police murders, which he describes as a systemic abuse of civilians.

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Read entire article at TheRealNews.com

The Justice Department says it will not seek the death penalty against four current or former New Orleans police officers charged in deadly shootings on a bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

Prosecutors disclosed the decision in court documents Friday. They did not say why they were not seeking the death penalty.

Less than a week after the 2005 storm, two people were killed and four others were wounded by police on the Danziger Bridge. The shootings led to a widespread investigation of the police department.

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.

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More than 100,000 Katrina victims from New Orleans flooded Houston after the storm in 2005.

Five years later, many have found homes.　However, there are some still struggling to find a way.

One can never guess what a hurricane will do. Eloise Thompson learned that the hard way.

“We didn’t think (Katrina) would do anything because other times it never did,” says Thompson.

So she stayed in New Orleans for the hurricane and witnessed what many saw on television.

“I wish I wouldn’t have because I was stuck there and seen all the dead bodies,” she recalled.

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Thompson was bused to West Virginia and eventually landed in Houston with her children. Five years later, this mother admits that she still can’t get on her feet.

“I’m still homeless,” the 27-year old said.

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Thompson is one of a handful of evacuees who fled to Houston without a home address. She’s staying at the Star of Hope Transitional Center.

It’s estimated that about 120,000 people evacuated to Houston from New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina.

Five years later, about 20,000 are still here.

Cheryl Washington and her husband Allen left New Orleans before the storm and started from scratch in the Bayou City.

“I think the thing that devastated me most was I never thought I would stand in the food stamp line,” said Cheryl Washington.

Read entire article at KHOU.com

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DC Comics Has New Hurricane Katrina Comic Book

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DC’s Vertigo comics has released a new comic book based on Hurricane Katrina. Brian Young at The Huffington Post writes:

Written by Mat Johnson and drawn by Simon Gane, Dark Rain tells a story of opportunists trying to exploit the plight of New Orleans in the days after the hurricane. At times it’s alternately funny and moving, but it’s always focused on a very sharp but simple story.

It tells the tale of a man desperate for money who wants to rob a bank in the chaos of the flood and enlists the help of a reluctant ex-con who could use the money to help with his child support. Things go from bad to worse when they realize they’re racing against an evil Blackwater type outfit of mercenaries to the bank. Very reminiscent of a Third Man type story set in New Orleans, this is a book very much worth checking out.

Read The Whole Story At The Huffington Post

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Frontline On PBS Investigates Post-Katrina Police Shootings

Five years ago next week, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the body of Henry Glover was found burned in a charred sedan overlooking the Mississippi River in New Orleans.

The case was mysterious from the start, but it wasn’t until A.C. Thompson’s 2009 article for The Nation, “Body of Evidence,” that a real investigation began. Under pressure from The Nation, from advocacy groups like ColorofChange.org and from extensive, ground-breaking reporting by investigative journalism non-profit Pro Publica & the New Orleans Times-Picayune, a formal investigation was launched. Earlier this year an indictment was handed down in the case.

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PBS’s FRONTLINE profiles the Glover case—along with five other stories about post-Katrina police shootings—in the hour-long documentary “Law & Disorder.” A collaborative effort between FRONTLINE, Pro Publica and the Times-Picayune, “Law & Disorder” expands the Glover investigation into a multi-year inquiry into the NOPD and post-Katrina violence. You can watch the full episode online here.

Read entire article at TheNation.com

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Every year around this time, we hear voices from the right talking about the lessons of 9/11. To hear right wing politicians and pundits tell it, the lessons of 9/11 are: Bomb Arab countries before they bomb us, racially profile people of color, the world is separated into good and evil and either you’re with us or against us.
I’d like to think that the lessons of 9/11 would be: Be extremely cautious about domestic terrorists, don’t train militant religious fanatics to fight your enemies, because they might come back to bite us and treat all threats against our country seriously.
While people in the media talk about the lessons of 9/11 very often, it is rare to hear pundits and politicians talk about the lessons of Hurricane Katrina. While 9/11 left 2,998 people dead or missing, Hurricane Katrina left 2,536 people dead or missing and displaced over one million people.
But 9/11 changed several ways the government operates in terms of foreign and domestic polices, while Katrina changed very little. After 9/11, we invaded two countries , started the patriot act and changed airline travel as we know it.

Katrina has caused no significant changes in US policy. What the world saw after Katrina, was a natural disaster inflamed by poverty, segregation and racism. While the government may not have been able to stop the hurricane, the U.S. could have definitely prevented the racism and poverty that made Hurricane Katrina way worse than it should have been.
Hurricane Katrina was an embarrassment to the United States. Despite it’s great wealth, the U.S. could not take care of its own. After Katrina, George Bush’s approval rating was 45%, half of the 90% it reached after September 11th.
Hubert Humphrey once said, “A nation is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. Congress should not ignore the plight of our nation’s poorest and sickest beneficiaries any longer.”
The judgment on George Bush from his reaction to Katrina both domestically and internationally is part of his legacy forever. Still, it seems as if the lessons of Katrina have been lost on the Republican party.
Imagine if instead of only training our army to kill they were trained to help and rescue people from disasters both man made and natural. Imagine how many lives the U.S. Army could have saved in the south asian tsunami, or the Haitian earthquake? Would the Arab world hate the U.S. if Air Force planes were used to save people from the floods in Pakistan rather than to bomb villages in Afghanistan?
Protecting our citizens and keeping our country safe is no just about bombing countries that we think our threats. Not all threats come from Islamic extremists. Hunger, poverty, crime, natural disasters and diseases also threaten the safety of our country and citizens. If we can spend billions of dollars to invade other countries to keep our country safer, we should sacrifice to make the country safer for all of our citizens from natural disasters and diseases.
It is time to heed the lessons of Katrina. We are one country and all of our citizens are important, rich and poor, black and white. When a government gives an every man for himself attitude towards disease and natural disasters, it reflects badly on our country. It is the duty of our country to, not only protect its citizens against terrorist attacks, but against natural disasters and diseases as well. If America is serious about being the world’s police man, they should also think about being the world’s fireman too. The money that was supposed to be used to fix the levees in New Orleans was used to drop bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine if our tax payer money was used for disaster relief rather than to create more disasters.
The lessons of Hurricane Katrina is that a military cannot save its people from disasters if they are only trained to kill. America has not been invaded in 300 years yet we invest more money into our military than we do anything else. Rather than being a destroyer, American needs to be a savior, of both its own people and its fellow citizens of the world.

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After Hurricane Katrina, Cops Told They Can Shoot Looters

In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters, according to present and former members of the department.

It’s not clear how broadly the order was communicated. Some officers who heard it say they refused to carry it out. Others say they understood it as a fundamental change in the standards on deadly force, which allow police to fire only to protect themselves or others from what appears to be an imminent physical threat.

The accounts of orders to “shoot looters,” “take back the city,” or “do what you have to do” are fragmentary. It remains unclear who originated them or whether they were heard by any of the officers involved in shooting 11 civilians in the days after Katrina. Thus far, no officers implicated in shootings have used the order as an explanation for their actions. Only one of the people shot by police – Henry Glover – was allegedly stealing goods at the time he was shot.

Read more at ProPublica

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CHALMETTE, La. (AP) – Five years after Hurricane Katrina, Jay Young is still haunted by the desperate voices on the other end of the telephone crying and begging for help.

As a loan officer for a federal agency that was supposed to help homeowners and businesses get back on their feet, he had high expectations he could make a difference. But he recalls how he was forced to turn away many qualified applicants because of what he says was pressure from his supervisors to close files quickly.

Karen Bazile remembers having high hopes, too, when she applied for a loan from the same agency, the Small Business Administration, to rebuild her home in the New Orleans suburb of Chalmette. While she ultimately got the money, she quickly lost faith as she struggled with different loan officers who misplaced her paperwork and told her she had only 48 hours to find and fax critical documents or her application would be canceled.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: This story was reported by Associated Press writers Mitch Weiss, Michael Kunzelman, Holbrook Mohr, Cain Burdeau, Troy Thibodeaux and Jason Bronis. It was written by Weiss.

___

Some 160 miles to the east, in Alabama, Erik Schmitz, former commodore of the Fairhope Yacht Club, takes in a breathtaking view of Mobile Bay from a posh new clubhouse rebuilt in part with a $1.5 million disaster loan, the maximum from the SBA. For Schmitz, the entire loan process was smooth sailing.

While stories of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s contaminated trailers and the Army Corps of Engineers’ inability to shore up the levees captured the headlines in the aftermath of the deadly storms of 2005, the bungling of the SBA, the lead federal agency helping people rebuild their homes and businesses, has largely been untold.

The sagas of Schmitz, Bazile and the SBA’s Young, who worked out of the agency’s massive loan processing center in Fort Worth, Texas, collectively reveal how the SBA failed in so many ways, an ominous experience as the agency prepares to play a similar role in the aftermath of the massive BP PLC oil spill.

These are stories of a mismanaged bureaucracy that still hurt half a decade later: tales of applications for low-interest disaster loans that should have been approved but were not, of applications deleted from the SBA computer system for no valid reason, of impossible-to-meet deadlines manufactured to clear backlogs, and of a process so chaotic and painful that thousands simply gave up.

An Associated Press investigation based on more than 200 interviews, thousands of pages of public documents obtained under the federal Freedom of Information Act and a first-ever detailed computer analysis of SBA data from hurricanes Katrina and Rita found that:

- Despite the obvious need, 55 percent of homeowners and businesses that applied for help after the hurricanes were turned away. According to data provided by SBA, of 318,953 applications processed, 175,463 were rejected and 143,490 were approved.

- Only 60 percent of the loan money approved by SBA ultimately reached applicants. Over the years, SBA officials have told congressional committees that the agency had approved more than $10 billion in loans, touting it as an example of how SBA had helped those on the Gulf Coast. However, according to the data, only $6.1 billion of the approved loan money has been dispensed. SBA officials say many applicants never accepted the loans because they found other ways to rebuild, including using insurance money. But many former applicants said in interviews that they just walked away because the entire process took too long and was too complicated.

- Of the money SBA did distribute, $357 million – nearly 6 percent – has never been repaid. More than a dozen people whose loans were charged off told the AP that the agency hasn’t contacted them about repayment.

- Country clubs, yacht clubs, exclusive private schools and megachurches received millions in loans from the agency founded in 1953 with a mission to “aid, counsel, assist and protect the interests of small business concerns.” Some of the more substantial operations rebuilt bigger and better, often contradicting SBA rules that say damaged buildings should be repaired only to their original state.

- Homeowners and businesses in higher-income areas were more likely to get a loan than those in lower-income areas, according to AP’s analysis of SBA data by ZIP code. “The truth is that only the wealthy moved through the system easily,” said Gale Martin, another former SBA loan officer. “If you were of a certain income, we funded you first, which is not the way the system is supposed to work.” Martin contended that contrary to the SBA mission to especially help people who didn’t always have the means to rebuild, applicants with higher credit scores and bigger incomes were cherry-picked for processing first because those files could be closed quicker.

- A disparity also existed along racial lines. For example, the predominantly white, wealthier Lakeview section of New Orleans had the city’s highest ratio of approvals to rejections, while the lowest approval rates were in poorer, mostly black areas like the Lower 9th Ward. But a racial disparity was clear even among economically similar areas. SBA approved nearly 66 percent of loan applications in a predominantly white part of suburban St. Bernard Parish but approved only 42.1 percent in a predominantly black, adjacent section of eastern New Orleans with comparable median household income. SBA officials said they don’t collect information about race on loan applications, but try to reach out to applicants in poor neighborhoods. Civil rights leaders say the agency hasn’t done enough to help.

SBA officials insist the agency today is better prepared to handle a major disaster.

“We’re not proud of what happened during the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes,” said James Rivera, deputy associate administrator of SBA’s office of disaster assistance. “Our response was slow, but we’ve learned from our mistakes. We’ve had five years to reflect on this.”

During that period, agency officials say, they have added staff, improved technology and simplified the loan process to push money out quickly to disaster victims.

But recent reports by government watchdog groups and some critics have slammed SBA for being too slow to implement measures that could improve an agency with a troubled past.

Congressional investigators and SBA whistleblowers question whether the agency is any better equipped for a major disaster today, as the region grapples with the oil-spill related assault on three pillars of its economy – seafood, tourism and offshore drilling.

The SBA is once again setting up disaster recovery centers along the Gulf Coast, although the oil spill effort will likely be overshadowed by the hurricanes’ economic toll. While BP is responsible for the financial impact caused by the spill, the SBA is helping people while they wait for the corporate assistance.

“This is going to happen again – tomorrow – if there’s another Katrina,” Martin said. “They didn’t fix enough for it not to happen.”

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Images of New Orleanians trapped inside the Superdome without food and water, or desperately waiting on rooftops for help, haunted Americans in September 2005. Police officers walked off the job, looters ransacked downtown shops, and critics scolded the Bush administration for being too slow to respond.

Meanwhile, a different kind of chaos was unfolding inside the SBA.

A new computer system that was supposed to speed and simplify the loan process crashed time and again, resulting in massive delays. But that wasn’t the only problem.

“There were lots of people sitting around not doing anything with thousands of applications pouring in everyday,” said Brad Durtschi, a former SBA loan officer who now works for FEMA.

In the years leading up to the storms, the agency’s staff had been cut. When Katrina hit, followed by Rita about three weeks later, SBA had only 880 employees to process hundreds of thousands of loan applications, including 190 loan officers working at the Fort Worth center.

SBA scrambled to hire several thousand additional staffers, many to work in Texas, where loan applications filed in dozens of makeshift disaster recovery centers along the Gulf Coast were sent for processing. The new loan officers – many from the private sector, with no loan processing experience – were rushed into service and expected to navigate a complex set of rules and regulations.

It was bedlam, Durtschi said.

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The loan applications piled up, and the phones rang and rang. People wanted to know if their application had been approved, and when they would receive money to help reopen their business or rebuild their home. At one point, officers were told by supervisors not to answer phones because the questions were taking up too much time, former loan officers and supervisors told the AP.

By December 2005, the system was gridlocked. Hundreds of thousands of applications were sitting in computer queues awaiting processing. And the phone calls turned from inquisitive to frustrated to angry.

“People called in everyday crying and begging,” Martin said. “We were forced to do things that were wrong.”

With congressional pressure mounting to turn loans around more quickly, the agency began using new methods to clear the backlog that had little to do with helping people get loans, former loan officers and supervisors said.

Supervisors would reject applications if a single sheet of paper or signature was out of place. In the first four months following Katrina and Rita, the agency rejected more loans than it approved, according to an AP analysis. Loan officers were required to process up to twice as many applications per day. When one landed on their desk, a loan officer had to try three times within 24 hours to reach the potential borrower by telephone. If they didn’t, the loan was either declined or indefinitely shelved.

If shelved, the loan application was effectively canceled and a letter was generated saying the applicant had 60 days to reapply. But many times, the loan officers, under pressure to reach quotas, would call only once or not at all, then withdraw or decline the application, the former loan workers said.

They and their supervisors described computer queues clogged with tens of thousands of loan applications, and of overwhelmed employees being told to put efficiency above all else and callously dismiss the pleas of desperate people.

“People were homeless, living in their cars,” said Young, now a bank loan officer. “People were running out of rental assistance. They didn’t have a place to go. They had worn out their favors with their families. And they needed to move on. And they would call and ask: ‘Could you please do anything you can to help us?’”

“I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I knew it wasn’t right.”

Said Durtschi: “We had no compassion for these people. To our supervisors, it was all about production and we hurt a lot of people along the way.”

A 2007 report from the SBA’s Office of the Inspector General, which performs independent reviews and audits of the agency, criticized SBA for canceling pending approved loans without warning.

During one period in 2006, the report said, the agency’s Buffalo, N.Y., call center terminated 7,752 pending loans without notifying borrowers in advance. In many cases, the investigators found, no call had ever been made to the applicant to begin final processing.

If a loan officer did manage to reach a borrower, the applicant was given 48 hours to fax documents to bring the loan to the closing phase. Often, the borrower didn’t have all the paperwork readily available.

“Maybe you need a deed and it’s at the courthouse, but the courthouse is under water. The documentation is destroyed,” said Young, the former SBA loan officer. “Or maybe you need payroll stubs, and that information is gone. Now you’re told you have 48 hours to get it. That’s even if we reach you by phone. We have your old phone number. Sometimes we call, sometimes we don’t.”

When borrowers requested additional time, the agency was unyielding, Young said.

“We never budged,” he said. “It was a manufactured deadline that put undue stress on people.”

“At the end of the 48 hours, you’re wiped out from our queue,” he said. “You didn’t exist.”

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When a borrower did find the critical documents and fax them to Fort Worth, the paperwork would often get lost. The office had only a few fax machines to handle the crush. Receipt of the documentation was assured only if a loan officer waited by the machine to snag the papers.

Bazile remembers faxing 50- to 70-page packets two or three times before someone at the processing center would acknowledge receipt.

“How could something like that get lost?” she wondered. “It was a constant frustration.” Plus, the documents contained personal information, such as Social Security and bank account numbers.

Martin recalled once arguing unsuccessfully with her supervisor in favor of approving a loan for a small business owner and being told: “Don’t think about it. Move on.”

“They were ruthless, absolutely ruthless,” Martin said of her bosses. “We weren’t there to help the public.”

Those same supervisors often conducted contests with cash prizes to reward loan officers who cleared the most applications, usually by rejecting as many as possible. One supervisor told the AP she won $100 for exceeding production quotas.

“I would hear loan officers laughing about the loans they turned down,” Young said. “The same people kept winning.”

In recent weeks, the AP found more than two dozen of the same supervisors still working in the Fort Worth office. But all of the current supervisors reached by the AP declined to comment, saying the agency prohibited them from talking.

Others recall that productivity was the mantra at staff meetings. At one, a supervisor explained to loan officers how to get people off the phone. Use an egg timer, he said. When it goes off, hang up.

“Your performance was measured on the number of files you closed,” said Bill Russell, a former loan officer and certified public accountant. “It wasn’t long until people discovered that to meet the quota, the easiest thing to do was just to deny the loan.”

One supervisor who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity out of fear she would lose her job said that on weekends fellow supervisors and other managers would order pizza and just empty the queue of applications.

The extra sessions were called “Signoff Sunday,” she said. “It was all about getting these loans out of the system to make it appear like we were clearing up the backlog and helping people. But we weren’t helping people. What we were doing was saving our own jobs.”

SBA’s Rivera questioned whether supervisors pushed loans through without review.

“Obviously when you have 4,250 employees, you’re going to have some disgruntled employees,” he said.

He said loan officers had to meet strict production quotas in line with the private sector. If they didn’t, they could be let go.

But it was another campaign that created even more chaos in Fort Worth. By fall 2006, more than a year after Katrina, loans were still not moving quickly enough, former workers recalled. So SBA began “90-in-45,” a campaign to remove 90,000 loan applications from the queue in just 45 days.

“There was no real incentive to approve a loan,” Young said.

When borrowers found out their applications had been canceled, they would often call pleading for another chance, he said, adding that his supervisors wouldn’t let him help.

“It was heart wrenching,” he said, fighting back tears. “There were some nights that my wife would ask, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I’d sit there alone at the table, late at night, staring into space. Some nights I was up to 3 in the morning and I had to be up at 6.”

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Over the past year, AP reporters visited dozens of Gulf Coast communities, even going door-to-door in two neighborhoods – in Waveland, Miss., and Chalmette, La. with high concentrations of SBA loans that were approved but never disbursed.

Time and again, on streets where recovery has been hard to come by and where tall untended grass and cracked concrete foundations stand as reminders that many more people used to live and work here, the stories were remarkably consistent: A nightmare of lost paperwork; sudden and onerous deadlines; uncooperative, even combative loan officers at the other end of the phone line.

People in these communities are fiercely independent and wary of asking the government for help. Many said they did so because Katrina was so thoroughly destructive that they had no choice. But many of those who recalled their battles with SBA said they dreaded the possibility of having to ask the agency for help ever again.

Scott Peterson is still angry about the months he spent fighting with the SBA for a loan to reopen his flooded seafood restaurant in Waveland, a quiet beach town on the Mississippi coast that was nearly wiped off the map. He was rejected twice for a loan to repair the S&B Bar and Grill – even though he believed he qualified.

He reopened in 2006, but not before maxing out his credit cards and borrowing money from his parents to rebuild. He says he did the best he could, but some of the windows on his restaurant are still boarded up and the roof leaks.

Peterson is hurting again in a new way, this time because the oil spill has made it hard to find the seafood that draws his customers.

Despite his resentment and lack of faith in the SBA, he’s contemplating making another request for help.

“It’s going to be something to see when I apply again,” he said, shaking his head while stirring a pot of chicken gumbo on his kitchen stove.

Bazile remembers how she became so upset dealing with the SBA process that she had to seek medical assistance.

“I had no idea how overwhelming it was going to be,” said Bazile, 44, a former newspaper reporter who now works in the St. Bernard Parish president’s office. “My blood pressure shot up. My cardiologist asked me to stay home for a week or so, and so I did, but the problems didn’t go away.”

Dealing with the agency became a full-time job for Bazile, who lives on a street in Chalmette that saw one of the highest concentrations of SBA activity along the coast. She took a seven-week leave from her job at The Times-Picayune to contend with the mounds of paperwork and battery of phone calls it took to secure the money to rebuild her home.

More than once, a loan officer gave her a 48-hour deadline – out of the blue – to provide a required document or risk having her file closed. Phone messages went unreturned, and faxes to SBA mysteriously went missing.

“It caused incredible emotional distress on me,” said a tearful Bazile. “Many, many times my husband said, ‘Just let it go. Let it go. We’ll be all right.’ And we could have walked away. But, in the end, that low interest rate was the very key to the way we’re living right now. They owed it to us, and I wasn’t going to let somebody bully me out of it.”

___

Many SBA applicants along the Gulf Coast had left their flooded homes and businesses and were living in tents, government-issued trailers, or with family and friends – sometimes far from home. In many cases, SBA officials had encouraged them to apply for loans. Few of the more than 200 interviewed said they had a smooth ride.

Hassie Howell, who owned six rental properties on the same street in Chalmette, was approved for a $300,000 loan to fix up all six. He repeatedly called SBA to find out when he would receive the money. But each time he called, he said, he was transferred to another loan officer who wanted even more paperwork before the money could be released. When he sent in the documents, there were “more unexplained delays.”

“More excuses,” he said.

In the meantime, he was losing money.

Unable to wait any longer, Howell sold two properties elsewhere in Chalmette and used the proceeds to begin rebuilding the rental units.

When SBA called nearly a year later and told him it was ready to disburse the $300,000, Howell felt it was too little, too late. “I didn’t want anything to do with them,” he said.

Today, the street is plagued by omnipresent concrete slabs and vacant decrepit homes. A neighboring street is a tangle of empty, garbage-strewn lots and shoulder-high weeds. Five of his homes have tenants.

The community was stable before Katrina, Howell said. Now it is transient.

“If I had gotten the money early, we would have been up and others would have returned,” said Howell, who now lives in Baton Rouge, La. “The whole experience was a nightmare.”

___

From the Fairhope Yacht Club’s wraparound porch, Schmitz watches boats bob before a brilliant orange-and-pink sunset and describes how the old clubhouse, a rambling, one-story structure, was destroyed by Katrina.

That left members with a choice: Restore the facility to its former specs or build a new multistory clubhouse with amenities that could attract new members. They chose the latter.

The new club’s $4 million price tag includes an SBA loan of about $1.5 million. The facility is double the size of the old building, with a new restaurant and bar and a swimming pool that alone cost nearly $300,000. The Fairhope Yacht Club reopened in 2008; these days there’s a waiting list to join.

“For us, Katrina was an opportunity to build something bigger and better,” said Schmitz, a short, thin former teacher who looked ready for a regatta, with his khaki shorts, white sneakers and red pullover shirt emblazoned with the yacht club’s logo – a blue and white striped flag with the club’s initials.

The yacht club had enough insurance to rebuild without SBA money. But without the federal help there would have been no upgrade. “I don’t see anything wrong with that,” Schmitz said.

Yet SBA regulations state that loan recipients should rebuild properties only to pre-storm conditions.

“Any improvements beyond pre-disaster condition is upgrading, and is not eligible,” according to SBA regulations.

“Our program is set up to return you to your pre-disaster condition,” said Jay MacKenna, an SBA spokesman. “So if you had a 1,000-square-foot mobile home and that was totally destroyed, we could help you replace your 1,000-square-foot mobile home. We would not be providing you money to go out and buy a 2,000-square-foot mobile home.”

There are certain exceptions, but they have to be authorized on a case-by-case basis. For example, the agency will allow an upgrade if an applicant uses their own money or borrows from a private lender to pay for the extra improvements. But agency officials have to check whether the borrower has the ability to repay the SBA loan and “any other debts.”

Borrowers don’t always tell SBA about the extra expenditures, though, and the agency doesn’t always check.

Schmitz said the club didn’t ask SBA if it could upgrade. But it was no secret; everyone in the community knew they were building a bigger yacht club. He said he never saw anyone from the SBA visit while the clubhouse was under construction.

“We just told them we needed the money to rebuild. It was quick and fast and we didn’t have any problems,” he said. “It was a wonderful experience.”

Before the money was disbursed, the agency verified Fairhope “had injected sufficient funds into the project” to meet the guidelines, said SBA spokeswoman Carol Chastang.

“There was no indication anywhere in the file that the yacht club upgraded their facilities using SBA disaster loan proceeds,” she said in an e-mail.

But she also said the yacht club had “completed much of the rebuilding with insurance and outside funding by the time it applied for the SBA disaster loan.”

“What does that tell you about how the entire process worked? Did they really need the money? This violates the spirit of the rules,” said Gale Martin, one of the former SBA loan officers.

For his part, Schmitz said the club’s members helped navigate the loan through the system.

“You have to understand that we have people from all walks of life,” he said. “We have lawyers. We’ve got people who – loan officers, and all this – who all knew pretty much the inside track on all this stuff, and they took care of it for us.”

More than one in three children studied – those forced to flee their homes because of the August 2005 storm – have since been diagnosed with mental health problems. These are children who moved to trailer parks and other emergency housing.

Nearly half of families studied still report household instability, researchers said.

“If children are bellwethers of recovery, then the social systems supporting affected Gulf Coast populations are still far from having recovered from Hurricane Katrina,” the researchers said.

The study was published online Monday in the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness.

Lead author David Abramson of Columbia University said researchers were astonished by the level of distress.

Children are “a bit of canary in a coal mine in that they really represent a failure or a dysfunction of many, many other systems in the community,” said Abramson, who is with Columbia’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness.

About 500,000 people, including more than 160,000 children, weren’t able to return to their homes for at least three months after the storm hit on Aug. 29, 2005.

At least 20,000 of those children still have serious emotional disorders or behavior problems, or don’t have a permanent home, the report suggests.

“Five years after Katrina, there are still tens of thousands of children and their families who are still living in limbo with a significant toll on their psychological well-being,” said co-author Irwin Redlener, also with the Columbia center. In addition, he is president of the Children’s Health Fund, an advocacy group that paid for the study.

Without significant government help, Redlener said, these children are likely to have even greater problems as adults.

Psychologist Joy Osofsky of Louisiana State University’s Health Sciences Center agreed, but said it was important to note that children in general are much more resilient than those from the extremely poor families Redlener is studying.

Osofsky, who has been working with children at St. Bernard, Plaquemines and Orleans parish schools since the storm, said Redlener’s study shows the effects of poverty, the trauma of Katrina and what followed.

Redlener’s group has been periodically studying 1,079 families in Louisiana and Mississippi since February 2006, six months after the storm struck. The latest interviews, from November 2009 through March, involved families with children between ages 5 and 18.

Over the five years, 38 percent out of 427 children have been diagnosed with anxiety, depression or a behavior disorder since Katrina. That’s almost five times more likely than children from similar families evaluated before the hurricane.

The percentage of newly diagnosed children has declined in each round of interviews but the numbers are still almost double the national average, Abramson said.

Almost half of the households either were living in transient housing or had no guarantee that they’d be in their current quarters for more than a year.

In separate research, Osofsky has looked at about 5,000 fourth- through 12th-grade children screened last year in St. Bernard, Plaquemines and Orleans parish schools. Of that group, 31 percent showed some symptoms of depression or post-traumatic stress, but only 12 to 15 percent asked for individual or group counseling. The school-based program doesn’t diagnose children, she said.

Redlener wants more mental health services available to children, government action to get the families into safe and stable housing, and more support for the families. He also says governments need to quickly collect information about children and families hurt by disaster and to ensure they can be helped as long as they need it.

“We know governments, state and federal, are dealing with a very deep recession…,” he said. On the other hand, he said, “It’s pay now or pay later – and the ‘later’ is extraordinarily expensive.”

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NEW ORLEANS – Spike Lee screened portions of his follow-up documentary about Hurricane Katrina in front of a big crowd at Mahalia Jackson Theater in New Orleans.

The premiere Tuesday included hours one and four of the HBO documentary, “If God Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise.” It airs on Aug. 23 and 24. Among those attending were Mayor Mitch Landrieu and New Orleans Hornets star guard Chris Paul.

Lee also produced “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts,” after Katrina struck in August 2005.

In the new movie, Lee returns five years later to see how plans to rebuild New Orleans have played out.

It also touches on the Saints’ Super Bowl victory and details the impact of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill on people who have yet to fully recover from the hurricane.

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WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans on Aug. 29.

The White House says Obama will speak at Xavier University. Other administration officials who have worked on Katrina recovery efforts will also be in the region to mark the anniversary.

Obama made his first trip to New Orleans since taking office in October, holding a town hall with local residents. He returned to the city again this year to assess efforts to stop the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

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Spike Lee visited the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego Saturday to give folks a sample of his new HBO documentary that includes a look at the BP Gulf oil spill.

The director showed about 90 minutes of “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise,” his follow-up to “When the Levees Broke” about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.Spike Lee visited the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego Saturday to give folks a sample of his new HBO documentary that includes a look at the BP Gulf oil spill.

The director showed about 90 minutes of “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise,” his follow-up to “When the Levees Broke” about the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

The film picks up with the New Orleans Saints’ Super Bowl victory and chronicles the impact of the spill on people who have yet to fully recover from Katrina

When asked if BP cooperated he said, “Nobody was speaking to me from BP.”

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Mississippi man is set to be arraigned on charges he fired a shotgun at three black men in what prosecutors call a racially motivated attack in Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath.

One of Roland Bourgeois Jr.’s alleged victims was shot in the throat but survived. Two others had less serious wounds.

Bourgeois, a 47-year-old white man from Columbia, Miss., allegedly opened fire on the men as they tried to leave New Orleans after the August 2005 storm.

A five-count indictment handed up this month claims Bourgeois and others discussed shooting black people and defending a New Orleans neighborhood on the south side of the Mississippi River from “outsiders” after the storm.

Bourgeois is scheduled to appear before a federal magistrate Thursday for his arraignment.

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A five-count indictment Thursday accuses 47-year-old Roland Bourgeois Jr. of firing a shotgun at the men in the city’s Algiers Point neighborhood while they tried to flee after the August 2005 hurricane.

Prosecutors said Bourgeois discussed shooting black people and “defending” the neighborhood after the storm. He allegedly retrieved a bloody baseball cap belonging to one of the victims and displayed it after the shooting.

Bourgeois, now a resident of Columbia, Miss., faces a possible life sentence if convicted of charges that include committing a hate crime with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

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