Ex-Cop Michael Hunter Pleads Guilty in Danziger Shooting — ProPublica

Series: Law & Disorder

Ex-Cop Michael Hunter Pleads Guilty in Danziger Shooting

by A.C. Thompson

April 8, 2010, 9:30 a.m. EDT

Former New Orleans police officer Michael Hunter pleaded guilty Wednesday to charges of conspiring to obstruct justice and failure to report a felony for his role in the Danziger Bridge shootings, which occurred in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. He's the third ex-cop to admit guilt in the ongoing case.

On Sept. 4, 2005, Hunter and other officers barraged a group of civilians with gunfire, killing two and wounding four others. The latest guilty plea, covered in depth by our partners at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, offers fresh details about that bloody day.

The judge who accepted Hunter's guilty plea said she was "sickened by the raw brutality of the shooting and the craven lawlessness of the cover-up" by police.

With the Times-Picayune and PBS "Frontline," ProPublica is investigating a string of violent encounters between police and civilians in the wake of the hurricane, examining the deaths of Danny Brumfield, Matt McDonald, and Henry Glover, as well as the non-fatal shooting of Keenon McCann.

Follow ProPublica

Most Read

Latest Stories from ProPublica

Fossil Fuel Interests Are Working to Kill Solar in One Ohio County. The Hometown Newspaper Is Helping.

North Dakota’s Likely Next Governor Brushes Off Conflict Concerns, Says His Oil and Gas Ties Would Benefit the State

Election Skeptics Are Running Some County Election Boards in Georgia. A New Rule Could Allow Them to Exclude Decisive Votes.

ProPublica Expands Audience Team

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page