October 9th: The numerous accounts of escalated police harassment and violence after Hurricane Katrina reported on NOLA Indymedia, many of them first reported here, (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) are getting unprecedented corroboration in the corporate media when an Associated Press TV camera caught the beating of a 64-year old man in the French Quarter Saturday, October 8th. After being ordered to stop filming, an officer attacked the AP producer accompanying the cameraperson. Some (but not all) officers involved have been suspended. Read the AP story and watch the tape here.

The NOPD has a long history of brutality and corruption, including the apparent theft of Cadillacs from a dealership as tens of thousands of residents were trapped without transportation, food, water or shelter in the wake of Katrina. Yet the AP reports that two of the five police that committed the assaults were federal officers, suggesting recent police violence in New Orleans cannot be explained as merely due to a corrupt departmental culture. This comes as information has surfaced that hundreds of National Guard troops (engineers) were in a separate part of the Convention Center throughout the horrendous ordeal of thousands there, but did not intervene.