Shots On The Bridge: The Context Is Racism

I harbor and advise skepticism when the suffering of Black people

becomes grist for White authors. The ten-year anniversary of the
levee failure and the 2005 deluge of New Orleans was accompanied by
the latest hemorrhage of Katrina literature, primed to commemorate
and cash in.
On the final Tuesday in August, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronnie
Greene was in Washington, D.C. to discuss the freshly published Shots
On The Bridge: Police Violence and Cover-Up in the Wake of Katrina.
The book deconstructs the Danziger Bridge Shooting where New
Orleans police officers gunned down a pair of unarmed Black families,
leaving two dead, four savagely maimed and a decade of court
wrangling.
Greene shared one sentence with his D.C. audience that confirmed my
suspicions and nearly decimated my willingness to read his book: I
really tried to put this shooting in context of what [the officers] were
going through, what the department was going through.
In his discussion and the text, Greene describes the officers as
Katrinas hostages, laboring in the wake of unimaginable ruin and
bedlam. Police leadership was flagrantly inept. Local officials and
global news outlets insisted looting hooligans might overrun Louisiana.
The officers, like many, had failures in the citys bleakest hour.
This position is tenable if the carnage on Danziger Bridge is a singular
example of NOPD misbehavior.
It is not.
Greene documents decades of pre-Katrina, during Katrina, and postKatrina police delinquency and abuse of New Orleans Black citizens.
He cites the 2011 Department of Justice findings, which concluded,
NOPDs mishandling of officer-involved shooting investigations was so
blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects.
Even hinting that a natural or manmade disaster should mitigate our
assessment of this slaughter and the years of fraud concealing it,
minimizes the barbarism of the involved officers and devalues the
Black lives terminated and mangled. As Greene meticulously
documents, much of the Danziger conspiracy took place well after New
Orleans was dry.
In spite of my concerns, I had to read Greenes offering. While sharing
his motives for writing this grisly account, he remarked that Katrina

created so many horrors you couldnt keep track. Shots On The

Bridge provides an abundance of detail about the NOPD ambush and
cover-up that could have easily been debris in the wreckage. But most
importantly, it emphasizes that an atrocity was perpetrated against
innocent, loving families. These grieving relatives unwavering pursuit
of justice may be the greatest - and least cited - example of NOLA
resilience.
The police fraudulently cast the Madison brothers as a band of armed
ruffians who had been looting and terrorizing people since the storm.
In truth, Ronald Madison was a mentally challenged 40-year-old with
the mind of a six-year-old; he cried at the thought of abandoning Bobbi
and Sushi, the family dachshunds, and rejected the chance to evacuate
before the storm. His protective brother Lance comforted and
shepherded him as they struggled to survive an inundated city.
While crossing the bridge, officers shot Ronald in the back twice. He
asked his brother Lance to, Tell Mom I love her. Ronald was shot in
the back five additional times, stomped, and handcuffed after his
death.
Lance Madison survived, only to be shackled at gunpoint, arrested,
charged with eight counts of attempted murder, and confined to the
temporary jail at Camp Greyhound. He was held in a cage with a
portable toilet. German shepherds circled the cage. Lances love for
his brother demanded that he recite witnesses names and remember
critical facts of the Danziger carnage for the twenty-five days of his
confinement.
The Madison family received reports of Ronalds death and Lances
arrest early. For more than nine months, Sherrel Johnson did not know
where her son JJ was. Her son, James Brissette Jr., accompanied the
Bartholomew family across the Danziger. Greene informs us that
floodwaters claimed all but one of Johnsons photographs of her 17year-old son. If JJ were alive, she could take more pictures.
Bullet after bullet shredded JJs body from the heel of his foot to the
top of his head; the teen now lay dead on the pavement. Seven
gunshot wounds and even more pellet wounds, fired from multiple
weapons, tore into JJs right leg, right buttock, and right elbow; pierced
his left arm and shredded his neck; and lodged in his brain. His wiry
body was left unrecognizable.
JJ and Ronald Madison were the only casualties that day, but NOPD
brutes littered the bridge with bullet-riddled Black bodies. The horror is
presented in excruciating clarity: Screams mixed with gunfire. The

mother, father, and daughter, Lesha, cried out, bloodied and in pain. A
bullet grazed Big Leonard Bartholomews head. Another tore into
Leshas stomach. More gunfire ripped into Susan Bartholomews right
arm, nearly severing it from her shoulder, her limb held together by
skin. Lesha, at seventeen years old, one inch shorter than Susan, lay
atop her mother, trying to shield her as bullets tore through the
concrete barrier.
Shots On The Bridge skillfully blends court transcripts and police
reports with crushing anecdotes from bereaved and wounded victims.
Jose Holmes, who was blasted repeatedly, was thought too far gone
and nearly left for dead. His recovery is all the more astounding
because some of the hospital staff accepted the NOPD lies and told
Jose he needed to get healthy because, once he was released, he
would be arrested on attempted murder charges.
Little Leonard Bartholomew was fourteen-years-old and a hulking
eighty-five pounds at the time of the shooting. His family was reduced
to bleeding carcasses clinging to life. He was shot at not hit, slapped
by a white patrolman, and handcuffed. Given the days events, he was
fortunate.
Greene rightly encourages readers to reflect on Little Leonards tearful
apology upon reuniting with his dismembered family members.
I should have been shot, too. It isnt right that I got off like that but
everybody else has to go through all of this pain. And Im just walking
around, Im fine. I dont have to worry about injuries. It just isnt right.
Theres an immense depravity about a Black teen suffering PTSD and
survivors guilt not from Hurricane Katrina, but from crossing paths
with the New Orleans Police Department.
Readers can juxtapose the families suffering against the online
comments that erased the 2011 federal convictions.
Shots On The Bridge is an important reminder that Katrina and the
cataclysmic levee fiasco are not the only horrors from 10 years ago.
Gus T. Renegade is the host of The C.O.W.S. Talk Radio a platform
designed to dissect and counter racism. He has interviewed and
researched authors, filmmakers and scholars from around the globe.