The police that shot civilians fleeing from the storm surge in New Orleans during the Katrina disaster all received stiff prison sentences.
The shooting of civilians was one of many low points our country experienced during the Bush Regime.
Robert Faulcon Jr., 48, was sentenced to 65 years in prison. Faulcon is the only officer tied to the second of the two fatal shootings on the bridge -- that of Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old mentally challenged man. Madison was felled by a shotgun blast to the back fired by Faulcon on the western side of the bridge.
Former Sgt. Kenneth Bowen, 38, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Bowen sat in the front passenger seat as a Budget rental truck full of officers sped to the bridge on the morning of Sept. 4, 2005. Prosecutors said Bowen jumped out of the truck and sprayed an AK-47 at a concrete barrier where civilians were hiding. The jury also convicted him of stomping on Madison as he lay dying, though Engelhardt later threw out that conviction, citing a lack of physical evidence.
Former Sgt. Robert Gisevius Jr., 39, was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Gisevius was one of several officers who rode to the bridge in the back of the Budget truck. He opened fire with an M-4 rifle after jumping out the back of the truck, and later, with Bowen and the investigators, helped orchestrate a years-long cover-up to hide what actually happened on the bridge.
Anthony Villavaso II, 35, was sentenced to 38 years in prison. He, too, rode in the back of the Budget truck, and then jumped out and fired an AK-47 at unarmed civilians on the bridge. Nine casings matching that AK-47 were recovered by investigators.
We have to assume that these convicted criminals will appeal these sentences although if a civilian had committed the same crimes the death penalty would have been their fate.