Katrina shootings Two unarmed residents were killed

Two unarmed residents were killed and four others wounded in the incident on the Danziger Bridge.

Prosecutors say the officers decided to "shoot first and ask questions later" and then tried to cover up the crimes.

Defence lawyers say their clients feared for their lives and were justified in using deadly force.

Most of New Orleans was flooded by the hurricane and there was widespread looting and violence in the storm's aftermath.

Prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein said police plotted to plant a gun, fabricate witnesses and falsify reports to cover up what they had done.
A federal jury on Friday convicted five current or former police officers in the deadly shootings on a New
Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.

a high-profile victory for the Justice Department in its push to clean up the city's troubled police department.

The case was a high-stakes test of the effort to rid the police department of corruption and brutality. A total of 20 current or former New Orleans police officers were charged last year in a series of federal probes.Three officers and one former officer were convicted of civil rights violations in the shootings that killed two people and wounded four others on the Danziger Bridge less than a week after the storm. All four and a retired police sergeant were convicted of engaging in a brazen cover-up that included a planted gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports. Retired Sgt. Arthur "Archie" Kaufman and the other four men also were convicted of engaging in a brazen cover-up that included a planted gun, fabricated witnesses and falsified reports. The five men were convicted of all 25 counts they faced.

Shaun Clarke, a defense attorney and former federal prosecutor who moved from New Orleans to Houston after Katrina, said the verdicts are "critically important" to the Justice Department's reform efforts. Prosecutors said Kaufman later produced a gun he owned and claimed it had been found at the scene, belonging to Madison's brother, and invented two nonexistent witnesses to the shootings. Sergeant Bowen was also charged with civil rights violations for kicking and beating Madison after he had already been wounded by Faulcon.Prosecutors contended 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. Police arrested Lance Madison on attempted murder charges, but a grand jury later cleared him.