A New Orleans police officer admitted in court toburning the body of a man who was shot and killed by a different officer in the days following Hurricane Katrina's rampage on the city.
Butofficer Gregory McRae said he wasn't trying to cover up the shooting death of Henry Glover in September of 2005. McRae said he saw too many bodies floating in the waters around New Orleans and didn't want to see Glover added to that number.
So it was just a coincidence that fellow New Orleans officer David Warren is accused of shooting an unarmed Glover outside a strip mall in his car?
And is it another coincidence McRae and another officer arechargedwith beating several people who drove Glover to a makeshift police headquarters seeking help for the mortally wounded man?
McRae is one of five officers on trial in federal court. And while I don't have access to all of the testimony and evidence in the trial, the excuse that McRae didn't want to see Glover's body floating in water sounds very shaky to me.
It sounds far more likely that the officers knew one of their compatriots did wrong in shooting Glover. But they also knew they were under stress and believed that the flood chaos created a desperate new set of rules in the streets of New Orleans -- kill or be killed.
McRae told his attorney he wouldn't burn Glover's body again if he had to so it all over again.
When asked by the presiding judge to explain why he burned Glover's body in his car, McRae said "I had reached a point, your honor, where I was tired of smelling putrid human rotten flesh."
If that is true, then why did another officer, Lt. James Meish, testify that he saw McRaelaughingafter he burned the car?
During the prosecutor's cross-examination, McRae acknowledged that he knew that burning Glover's body would hamper any homicide investigation.
I have no doubt that police were under unimaginable stress in theearly days of Hurricane Katrina. Remember the early reports from New Orleans that armed gangs were roaming the streets killing and looting?
But these officers appear to have organized a massive cover-up to hide the murder of an innocent man. And if found guilty, they should pay dearly.
16-Nov-10 - Forty-five years after he was killed by an Alabama State Trooper, Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death lead to the first civil rights march on Selma, he is finally getting a small measure of justice.
12-Nov-10 - In a case better suited for Judge Mathis, Paula Cook is proceeding with her civil suit against Fantasia Barrino for an antiquated legal cause of action called "Alienation of Affection" in a North Carolina court.
