SUMMARY: Troy Andrews, better known as Trombone Shorty, grew up with music all around him in New Orleans, first playing on the streets at age 4. Now with a Grammy, an international following and a new album, Andrews also devotes himself to the role of music educator in his hometown. Jeffrey Brown reports.
SUMMARY: Ten years since Hurricane Katrina brought tragedy to the city of New Orleans, the story of its recovery can read like a tale of two cities. Marc Morial, Urban League CEO and former mayor, joins Gwen Ifill to take stock of the school system, the need for affordable housing and the enormous task of rebuilding and recovering.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): The future of patient care is only one of the concerns casting a shadow over the Crescent City 10 years later.
A new report out today has a sobering assessment of other problems plaguing its majority African-American community. Among its findings, in 2005, 44 percent of black children in New Orleans were living in poverty. That number has gone up to 51 percent. And the earnings gap between black and white families has increased by 18 percent. African-American households bring in roughly $25,000 a year, white households $60,000.
The National Urban League study on these and other disparities was released today in New Orleans.
I sat down with CEO Marc Morial to talk about it when I was in the city earlier this week.
Marc Morial, thank you for joining us.
MARC MORIAL, President, National Urban League: Thanks, Gwen.
GWEN IFILL: You are the son of a mayor, former state senator, former mayor of New Orleans. And now, as head of the Urban League, you have come out with a report in which you have taken stock of what’s happened in the 10 years since Katrina. It reads like a tale of two cities.
MARC MORIAL: It is a tale of two cities.
New Orleans has long been, like many American cities, a tale of two cities. And I think it’s clear, as you take this snapshot 10 years later, after this tragedy of Katrina, that it’s still a tale of two cities, yes, with great physical rebuilding, yes, a city that survived a tremendous challenge. But that’s why I think we have to look at this as a commemoration and a continuation, and not a celebration.
GWEN IFILL: There’s been so much conversation over the years about bouncing back. You talked about resilience, about the ability of New Orleanians to recreate what had been washed away.
But let’s talk about the issues one by one. Education, what does your report find?
MARC MORIAL: So our report finds certainly that you have got a higher high school graduation rate. But our report also finds that, when it comes to children, there are more children in poverty today than there were before Katrina, and that when it comes to education, while you see signs of progress, there are new schools, there’s improvements in schools, the truth is, is that it’s a school district with fewer students.
It’s true that these reforms have come at a tremendous cost to the city, and that cost was the layoff of some 7,000 mostly African-American unionized teachers almost 10 years ago. And that’s left, if you will, a scar and pain on the effort to reform the schools. Now, it’s all about what’s doing best for kids. But I think it’s important for people to be measured. At this point, it’s like halftime.
A federal judge on Tuesday overturned the convictions of five New Orleans police officers tied to the shooting of unarmed civilians during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, finding that prosecutors in the case had engaged in “grotesque” misconduct.
In a blistering and meticulously detailed 129-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt found that federal prosecutors in New Orleans had anonymously posted damning online critiques of the accused officers and the New Orleans Police Department before and during the 2011 trial, a breach of professional ethics that had the effect of depriving the officers of their rights to a fair trial.
The judge granted the officers’ request for a new trial.
“Re-trying this case is a very small price to pay in order to protect the validity of the verdict in this case, the institutional integrity of the Court, and the criminal justice system as a whole,” Judge Engelhardt wrote.
The judge’s decision nullifies – at least temporarily – a key success in the U.S. Department of Justice’s half-decade effort to clean up the troubled New Orleans Police Department. Four of the five officers had been accused of firing on a group of civilians on or near the Danziger Bridge on Sept. 4, 2005, killing two people and seriously injuring others; a fifth officer had been charged with covering up the shooting.
The judge’s ruling excoriated two former top attorneys in the federal prosecutor’s office in New Orleans, as well as a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division who had played a role in the case. The prosecutors posted comments about the Danziger case on NOLA.com, the website of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, as the case was still unfolding. The comments included a variety of attacks on the police department, calls for guilty verdicts and encouragements to other anonymous commentators to take apart the defense being offered by the five officers.
Engelhardt wrote that he was unaware of any other case in which “prosecutors acting with anonymity used social media to circumvent ethical obligations, professional responsibilities, and even to commit violations of the Code of Federal Regulations.” He called the behavior of prosecutors “bizarre and appalling.”
The Justice Department, in a statement, said it was disappointed in the judge’s action.
“We are reviewing the decision and considering our options,” the statement said.
Judge Engelhardt’s ruling sets the stage for another round of trials for former detective Arthur Kaufman, who was charged with directing an extensive cover-up, as well as former officers Anthony Villavaso, Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, and Robert Faulcon, who were accused of firing on the civilians. Judge Engelhardt had overseen the trial and sentenced the officers to prison terms ranging from 6 to 65 years.
Lawyers for the officers subsequently asked the judge to overturn the conviction, saying the prosecutor’s office had “engaged in a secret public relations campaign” to inflame public opinion against the officers and to secure their convictions. The judge did not find evidence of an organized campaign, but said the conduct of the individual prosecutors had wound up having the same effect.
Two of the prosecutors involved in the online posting, Sal Perricone and Jan Mann, resigned after their conduct became known. The D.C.-based Justice Department lawyer implicated in the scandal, Karla Dobinski, is a veteran of the Civil Rights Division. It is unclear whether her employment status has been affected by the revelations.
News that some federal prosecutors in the New Orleans office had improperly posted comments online first broke in 2012, and ultimately cost Jim Letten, the office’s top official, his job. The Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility launched an investigation.
But Judge Engelhardt’s ruling called into question just how vigorous and comprehensive a probe that has been.
Anxiety is high in New Orleans as the city braces for Tropical Storm Isaac exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina, but officials believe the city will be spared the brunt of the storm.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) director Craig Fugate urged storm watchers to focus on other areas that face the prospect of more damage, like Alabama and Mississippi, instead of New Orleans.
"I know that Katrina is first and foremost on everybody's mind because the anniversary is coming up... but I think people need to understand this is not a New Orleans storm. This is a Gulf Coast storm," Fugate said.
Fugate said he was confident that New Orleans is prepared for Isaac with numerous safety precautions in place and improved levees after a multi-billion dollar effort to rebuild and strengthen the system post-Katrina.
"It's a much more robust system than what it was when Katrina came ashore," he said.
When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, a flawed levee system failed, causing flooding that caused mass devastation. About 1,800 people were killed and 80 percent of the city was destroyed.
This time, officials insist the city is ready.
"I feel the anxiety," New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at a news conference on Sunday. "All of us, you can kind of feel it and you think, 'Oh my goodness. Could this possibly happen again?' The answer is, of course it can. Is it likely that it's going to happen again? Who knows? That's not the point. It's absolutely true that we are better prepared."
"All pumps are operational," he said of the levees. "We are well prepared to go."
New Orleans has not put mandatory evacuations in place, but some surrounding parishes have urged people to leave. About 53,000 residents of St. Charles Parish outside of New Orleans were told to leave before the storm.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency in the state, and Landrieu said that "now is the time" for residents to prepare for the storm. He urged people to pick up medicine prescriptions, batteries and bottled water. He said residents should clear gutters and storm drains, move cars to designated areas of higher land and board up windows.
"The timing of this storm coming on--as fate would have it, the anniversary of Katrina--has everyone in a [heightened] sense of alertness and that is a good thing," Landrieu said. "It's important to be on high alert. It's also important to just stay prepared because of the uncertainty of this storm."
The storm is expected to cross New Orleans late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning as a Category 1 hurricane.
Landrieu stressed that the airport, Superdome and convention center in New Orleans would not serve as emergency shelters like they did during Hurricane Katrina.
The Gulf Coast has not been hit since 2008 when hurricanes Dolly, Ike and Gustav all struck.
"We are much, much better prepared structurally than we were before and I do think that we have been through a number of other very difficult instances so I think the citizens are much more prepared and much more sophisticated," Landrieu siad. "But, at the end of the day, what it has to equal is when the sound goes off everybody has to know where they're going and what they're doing and this time we're much better at knowing what that is."
"The best part of wisdom is to prepare for the worst and to hope for the best," Landrieu said.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): For years, the New Orleans Police Department has labored under a long shadow of misconduct, investigations, charges and criminal convictions. Now the city has agreed to major reforms.
New Orleans now faces a sweeping federal mandate, to reform a police department plagued by corruption and abuse for decades.
ATTORNEY GENERAL ERIC HOLDER: This consent decree will allow us to move forward, and move forward together, and will enable the people of New Orleans to have, in the words of Mayor Landrieu -- and I quote him -- a world-class police department.
GWEN IFILL: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder formally outlined the deal yesterday, an agreement Mayor Mitch Landrieu estimates will cost roughly $11 million a year to put in place. Landrieu said it will fundamentally change the culture of the New Orleans police once and for all.
The planned reforms include mandatory training for officers in the use of force, routine stops and searches and bias-free policing, new standards for recruiting to increase diversity on the force, and videotaping of interrogations involving suspected homicides and sexual assaults. The department must also install video cameras in all patrol cars.
ERIC HOLDER: This consent decree belongs to the entire community and includes ideas that were brought to us by community members, front-line officers and experts alike.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): In the chaos following the historic flooding from 2005's Hurricane Katrina, another tragedy unfolded. One week after Katrina's initial blow to New Orleans, police shot six unarmed people on the city's Danziger Bridge after officers said they were responding to the distress call of another shooting.
Two of those six were killed: 17-year old James Brissette and a 40-year old mentally disabled man, Ronald Madison. Madison was killed when police chased him and his brother Lance, who was with him as they tried to find safe haven. Lance Madison was later arrested and accused of firing at police, according to prosecutors.
But today in federal court, a jury convicted a former police officer, a retired sergeant and three current members of the New Orleans Police Department, all on charges stemming from a cover-up. All but one were convicted of civil rights violations connected with the shootings as well.
Having said that, what to do about rebuilding New Orleans?
We should recover some of the natural protections, the swamps and wetlands surrounding New Orleans.
Also, we should recover the swamps that separated areas of New Orleans in the past. This has been suggested (not rebuilding specific neighborhoods) but has been put down as racism. Why, most of these areas are now poor neighborhoods, populated majority black. But we need to remember that Nature knows nothing about racism and doesn't care. Why did these areas end up populated by the poor? Would you build your multi-million dollar home in areas that were swamps and are still below river level? Rhetorical question, so such property gets regulated to the poor.
WHAT BEING DONE WRONG NOW:
In a nut shell, the White House's plans for rebuilding New Orleans.
Are we bringing back displaced citizens of New Orleans and giving them much needed jobs rebuilding their own city? Not much that I can see, but we are bring in workers from across the broader to do this work. No Bush "Executive Order" requiring hiring of New Orleans citizens first to help rebuild.
Did Bush want to pay decent wages to workers to do this job, especially those who were residents of New Orleans? No. He tried, and (at last word I heard) failed in trying to use "Executive Order" to bypass the law requiring wages at least equal to the wages before Katrina.
Has anyone pushed for a serious scientific study on how to rebuild New Orleans so this does not happen again? Yes; but lets see if, and how, the New Orleans commission's recommendations are implemented.
Then there's who got the first contracts. It's no surprise the Halliburton was at the very top of the list. Oh, of course it just cannot be that a former officer sits in the VP's chair, right? If you believe that one, I got a bridge..... Luckily that seems to have falling through and is being investigated.
Having said this, you can come to your own conclusions on how to rebuild New Orleans, and have residents gotten a fare shake.
