Legal
March 2, 2007
Submitting a claim for a staggering $77 billion, the city of New Orleans joined tens of thousands of would-be plaintiffs who rushed to beat a Thursday deadline to alert the Army Corps of Engineers that they may sue for losses resulting from the levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina. The Times-Picayune reports that also joining the queue were Entergy New Orleans, the city's bankrupt electrical utility, which is seeking $655 million, and the New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board, which put in a claim of about $460 million, spokesmen for the agencies said.
A Baltimore man who already served prison time for mail fraud has been indicted in a scheme that bilked more than 900 investors, including Hurricane Katrina victims from the Mississippi Gulf Coast, out of $8 million, the U.S. attorney's office said Thursday. David McDowell Robinson, 56, was arrested Thursday, a day after a federal grand jury indicted him on wire and mail fraud charges, reports The Associated Press. The company solicited investments of up to $10,000 and promised returns of up to 30 percent, saying it would provide short-term "gap financing" to homebuyers or to people refinancing their homes to generate the returns. Robinson instead paid investors with funds received by other investors, creating a classic Ponzi scheme, prosecutors said.
March 1, 2007
A federal judge in Mississippi weighing competing plans to resolve thousands of disputed claims against State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. after Hurricane Katrina heard emotional testimony Wednesday from policyholders who believe they have been shortchanged by the insurer. The Associated Press reports that one woman told U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. that she has contemplated suicide in the months since her home was destroyed and State Farm refused to pay for an estimated $300,000 in damage.
February 28, 2007
The governor of Arizona could not take over residents' weapons during a war emergency, according to a bill that advanced easily in the state House Tuesday, reports The Arizona Republic. Lawmakers made an exception for large caches of ammunition, an allowance that should ensure that the gun bill wins Gov. Janet Napolitano's signature. Designed to prevent the kind of gun confiscation that happened in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the bill would prevent the governor from commandeering firearms and weapons during a state of war emergency. The New Orleans police chief confiscated residents' weapons in the wake of Katrina, citing public safety. The National Rifle Association successfully sued to have the weapons returned, and the Louisiana Legislature changed the law last year to bar such confiscations.
February 27, 2007
Hundreds of New Orleans residents scrambled Monday to beat a deadline for filing court claims against the federal government and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for damage resulting from the failure of levees and floodwalls following Hurricane Katrina, reports The Associated Press. The corps says the deadline is 4 p.m. Thursday for it to receive Katrina litigation claims at its Uptown office. Roughly 30,000 residents had filed a claim as of late last week, but Thursday's deadline surprised many people whose homes and businesses were damaged or destroyed in the flooding following the storm.
January 24, 2007
State Farm has agreed to pay thousands of Mississippi homeowners hit by Hurricane Katrina likely hundreds of millions of dollars in a landmark settlement that's expected to reverberate across the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast, reports USA TODAY. The company agreed to a deal under which it will reopen thousands of homeowners' claims and is likely to pay as much as $500 million, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood announced Tuesday. In a related development, State Farm will settle more than 600 individual Mississippi homeowners' Katrina claims for roughly $80 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations who didn't want to be named because the settlement is confidential.
A week after angry and displaced New Orleans residents stormed a fenced-off public housing complex in a bid to return home, the federal housing agency has asked a judge to give it the power to stop future incursions, reports The Associated Press. The Department of Housing and Urban Development urged U.S. District Judge Ivan Lemelle to hold an immediate hearing on its request to bar unauthorized people from the development, but the judge deferred. He took it under consideration and did not schedule a court date. Last week residents and activists entered gaps cut into a barbed wire fence surrounding the grounds of the St. Bernard housing development to stage a cleanup.
January 23, 2007
A former Bolivar County, Mississippi, administrator pleaded guilty Monday to receiving a cash kickback from Hurricane Katrina relief funds. Adrian Brown, 29, made the plea in U.S. District Court in Aberdeen. He remains charged with witness tampering, reports The Associated Press. Brown, who had been administrator in Bolivar County since April 2004, was arrested by FBI agents at his office on June 6 for requesting and accepting kickbacks from the owner of a company that was hired to develop and maintain a Web site for the county to assist displaced Katrina evacuees. FEMA reimbursed the county $48,402 for the Web site.
January 22, 2007
On the eve of trial, State Farm has agreed to pay an estimated $1 million to settle a lawsuit by a Mississippi Gulf Coast resident whose house was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, according to The New York Times. The settlement came a week after a jury ordered the insurer to pay $2.5 million in punitive damage to a homeowner with a similar case. State Farm and lawyers for the homeowner confirmed the settlement. They would not say how much State Farm paid, but trial lawyers not involved in the case said simple mathematics and logic suggested that the insurer agreed to pay about $1 million.
January 4, 2007
Mississippi's Jackson County is in line to set up a long-awaited drug court for teens at Youth Court for one year, beginning mid-February. County supervisors on Tuesday voted to allow the Jackson County Community Services Coalition to set up and run the drug court on Youth Court property, with a $37,000 grant from the state Department of Public Safety, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. The coalition's director says that while 80 percent of the county's youth don't have a problem with drugs and alcohol, abuse has gone up since Katrina.
December 13, 2006
The leader of a nonpartisan Mississippi watchdog group is urging state ethics commissioners to decide whether three legislators are breaking the law by profiting from a contract that allows them to finalize grants for Hurricane Katrina victims. The Mississippi Press reports that Dick Johnson, president of the Mississippi affiliate of Common Cause, also says ethics commissioners should tell the public about the results of their investigation.
December 11, 2006
In the latest twist to the demographic transformation of New Orleans since it was swamped by Hurricane Katrina last year, hundreds of babies are being born to Latino immigrant workers, both legal and illegal, who flocked to the city to toil on its reconstruction. The New York Times reports that the throng of babies gurgling in the handful of operational maternity wards in New Orleans has come as a big surprise — and a financial strain — to this city, which before the hurricane had only a small Latino community and virtually no experience of illegal immigration.
The owners of a St. Bernard Parish nursing home where 35 people died in the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina will likely go on trial in St. Francisville, La., 120 miles northwest. The Associated Press reports that State Judge Jerome Winsberg made the decision Friday, after agreeing the day before that it would be too difficult to find an impartial jury to try Salvador and Mabel Mangano in the battered parish.
December 8, 2006
Standing in front of a crumpled, flood-damaged Honda on Thursday, U.S. Sen. Trent Lott and other lawmakers said they're pushing to end "title washing," in which cars with troubled histories are sold to unsuspecting consumers. The Mississippi Republican said about 500,000 cars were damaged by Hurricane Katrina — including the one he used to drive — and many have been cleaned up and resold, reports The Clarion-Ledger. Lott and the other lawmakers said they will press the new Congress to approve legislation that would require insurance companies and others who take possession of totaled or heavily damaged cars to disclose that the vehicles are rebuilt wrecks.
December 6, 2006
FEMA said Tuesday that it will appeal a judge's order that the agency resume housing assistance and make retroactive payments to thousands of hurricane evacuees, according to the Houston Chronicle. The appeal notice came just hours after lawyers for evacuees asked a federal judge in Washington to order FEMA to provide a plan for compliance with the Nov. 29 order. FEMA's notice did not specify grounds for the appeal.
December 5, 2006
A Louisiana State Police employee and 11 others have been arrested in connection with the theft of 256 computers purchased by federal authorities after Hurricane Katrina to replace storm-damaged computers at government buildings, hospitals and other facilities, according to The Associated Press. Only 43 of the stolen Dell computers, valued at about $900 each, had been recovered as of Monday morning, police said.
December 4, 2006
A government watchdog agency is looking into two hurricane-related contracts awarded to Clearbrook LLC, a water services company based in Mobile, Ala., and expects to issue its findings and recommendations next month, a Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman said. The investigation is being conducted by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, FEMA's parent agency, according to spokesman James McIntyre. Late last year, the inspector general reported finding evidence of more than $3 million in overbillings on a Clearbrook contract worth up to $80.6 million to provide food and lodging to emergency responders, reports The Press-Register.
The chief and a captain of the Independence (La.) Police Department have been accused of trying to defraud the federal government in connection with work they said the department did in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. attorney's office said. The Associated Press reports that Chief Jesse Pingno and Capt. Brian Lamarca were charged Friday with one count each of theft of government property, U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said. Prosecutors allege that Pingno and Lamarca submitted inflated bills for overtime and vehicle use to FEMA, which agreed to reimburse agencies for overtime and equipment use after Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005.
December 1, 2006
The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency says he was disappointed that a judge, in a sharply critical ruling, ordered the agency to resume housing aid to thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees. "It's almost a thing of no good deed goes unpunished," Director R. David Paulison told reporters at the National Press Club. "We felt like we did a good job." The Houston Chronicle reports that a federal judge on Wednesday ordered the federal government to resume paying rent and make three months of retroactive payments for about 2,600 hurricane evacuee households in Houston and thousands more across the country.
November 29, 2006
Since Hurricane Katrina, murders in Jefferson Parish have doubled, the majority of them black-on-black killings. National Public Radio reports that late last month, Harry Lee, the flamboyant and outspoken sheriff of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish, made an offhand comment to a TV reporter that created a new controversy. "We know the crime is in the black community. Why should I waste time in the white community?" Lee was quoted as saying. The Chinese-American lawman, now in his seventh term in office, has a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth, but it only seems to increase his popularity.
See, hear National Public Radio report
November 28, 2006
A federal judge in Louisiana kept a suit against major insurance companies alive Monday by rejecting the insurers' motions to dismiss the litigation, ruling that the language in some policies excluding coverage for water damage is ambiguous and may not apply. According to the Times-Picayune, the judge cited Louisiana law and precedent, which state that insurance companies face the burden of proving whether a clause excluding coverage applies in a policy.
November 8, 2006
Struggling to combat an increase in crime at apartment complexes with an understaffed force, the Houston Police Department is hoping to make property owners take more responsibility for keeping their residents safe. After heavy lobbying from the Houston Apartment Association, the City Council will consider an ordinance that would require owners of properties with high violent crime rates to hire an officer as a security consultant — for a one-time fee of $400 — and follow recommendations to make the property less vulnerable, reports the Houston Chronicle. About half of Houstonians live in apartment complexes, including buildings that have been filled to capacity since New Orleans residents flocked to Houston because of Hurricane Katrina last year. Without an increase in police to accompany the rise in population, tensions escalated at various properties.
November 2, 2006
A federal judge in Mississippi says he won't order a new trial for a Pascagoula couple whose lawsuit against their insurance company was the first case to be tried in the state after Hurricane Katrina spawned hundreds of similar lawsuits. The Associated Press reports that U.S. District Court Judge L.T. Senter Jr. refused to change his ruling in August that Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co.'s policies do not cover damage from a hurricane's wind-driven water, known as storm surge. Senter, who heard the landmark case without a jury, also said he sees no reason to order a new trial for Paul and Julie Leonard, who sued Nationwide after the company only paid them $1,661 for more than $130,000 worth of damage to their home.
November 1, 2006
The battle to represent hurricane-battered New Orleans in Congress should turn on which candidate can best help rebuild the city, but the buzz is about how $90,000 in cold hard cash ended up in incumbent Rep. William Jefferson's freezer, reports Reuters. Until the FBI found the money in May, the eight-term Democrat seemed certain to be re-elected to represent Louisiana's 2nd district, much of which lay under water after Katrina. Jefferson denies wrongdoing, but the investigation into whether he took bribes to promote business deals in Nigeria has spiced up the race. A slew of candidates are opposing him and a run-off is likely. The scandal also has complicated Democrats' efforts to cast the GOP as the party of corruption and has raised questions about whether Jefferson can keep voters loyal in a state with a history of tolerating politicians' graft.
October 30, 2006
For now the official Hurricane Katrina death toll stands at 1,697. But Columbia University geophysicist and earth scientist John Mutter believes the number is "well in excess of 2,000," reports The Associated Press. That's because Mutter isn't just counting people who drowned in Katrina's waters or were crushed because of the storm's powerful winds. Mutter's count also would include the despondent evacuee who committed suicide, the suspected looter fatally shot, and the dialysis patient who died because the storm interrupted treatment.
October 27, 2006
In Gulfport, Miss., an experimental mediation program is easing the crushing load of lawsuits spawned by Katrina, which damaged or destroyed more than 250,000 homes in Louisiana and Mississippi. The Associated Press reports that with hundreds of hurricane-related lawsuits clogging his docket, U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. has ordered several dozen plaintiffs and their insurers to sit down with a mediator and try to resolve their differences — or face "appropriate sanctions." Settlements were reached in seven of the first 17 cases to go to mediation; encouraged by those results, Senter last week ordered mediation for 57 more cases.
October 25, 2006
Contractors, tradesmen and migrant workers have been pouring into town to take advantage of the post-Katrina rebuilding boom, and so have prostitutes, police officials said in announcing a crackdown on the French Quarter's illicit sex trade, reports The Associated Press. Prostitutes from Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Detroit and Las Vegas have been found working New Orleans' streets, district commander Capt. Kevin Anderson said Tuesday. He said police arrested 53 women on prostitution charges during a recent two-week crackdown.
October 23, 2006
With more than 300 homicides since January, Houston is on pace to record nearly 400 slayings for the year — which would be the highest number of killings the city has seen in more than a decade, the Houston Chronicle reports. As of Oct. 16, the city had recorded 316 homicides, up 25 percent from the 252 slayings at this time last year. The Houston Police Department said an uptick in homicides by Hurricane Katrina evacuees has contributed to that increase.
Located in a high-density area loaded with apartments, the Park at Lakeside is a prime example of property where New Orleans exiles have settled, surrounded by single-family residences where homeowners put down roots years earlier. According to the Houston Chronicle, Houston Police Department statistics show the frequency of crime at this property — and the number of times police have been called there — increased in the year after the storm. But it was not as if those numbers soared to unprecedented levels. Rather, they virtually equaled statistics recorded two years earlier — well before Hurricane Katrina struck.
October 19, 2006
U.S. District Court officials in Gulfport, Miss., are managing more than 1,100 Hurricane Katrina lawsuits filed against insurance companies, according to information the court provided to The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. Court-ordered mediations and settlement conferences are expected to resolve some cases before trial. A court news release states that trials already have been set for 145 cases during 2007.
October 17, 2006
Like other Gulf Coast localities, the city of Biloxi, Miss., ignored code violations in the first frantic months after Hurricane Katrina hit. Code enforcement in Biloxi ceased from Aug. 29 until Jan. 1, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. In January, code enforcement resumed, but the city's current policy mandates a response only when a resident calls in a complaint.
October 13, 2006
A judge in New Orleans has ordered three insurance companies to reinstate their policies covering Dillard University, which was badly damaged in Hurricane Katrina 13 months ago, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. Two of the companies had canceled their flood-insurance coverage for the institution following the storm and the third had reduced its flood coverage from $50 million to $10 million. The university sued the companies this past summer, arguing that the reductions in coverage violated an emergency order issued by the Louisiana Department of Insurance. The judge's order, which stands for the duration of the legal proceedings, prohibits insurers from canceling or not renewing policies on property that had been damaged in the hurricane.
See Chronicle of Higher Education article
A federal judge has approved a $330 million preliminary settlement in the class-action lawsuit against Murphy Oil Corp. over an oil spill that contaminated thousands of homes during Hurricane Katrina, according to Arkansas Business. The judge set a Jan. 4 hearing to hear any objections to the proposal reached by Murphy Oil Corp. and plaintiffs' attorneys. Murphy Oil and the plaintiffs' attorneys agreed to the settlement in the case two weeks ago, but it has to be approved by the judge. The suit was filed after an oil storage tank at Murphy's Meraux refinery in St. Bernard Parish, outside New Orleans spilled about a million gallons of oil when storm surge from Hurricane Katrina hit and moved the tank from its base. The oil damaged some 10,000 homes and business over a 6-square-mile area.
October 12, 2006
A Florida contractor has been returned to Mississippi to face an embezzlement charge stemming from a hurricane restoration project. The Associated Press reports that Don Gene Clemons, 55, of Pensacola, Fla., was jailed Thursday at the Jackson County Adult Detention Center. Clemons allegedly entered into a contract with Jackson County homeowners and was advanced $45,000 to rebuild a home after it was severely damaged by Hurricane Katrina, according to the sheriff's department. On March 29, the homeowners filed a report with the sheriff's department alleging embezzlement.
October 6, 2006
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must halt all work on widening the Industrial Canal lock in New Orleans until it reconsiders the project's environmental impact, a federal district judge has ruled. The Times-Picayune reports that the ruling was hailed as a victory by Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, which filed the lawsuit asking that the project be reviewed. The neighborhood group, concerned about disruptions from the $764 million construction project, had worked against it in tandem with environmental groups concerned about contamination of the waterway.
October 5, 2006
As the New Orleans Police Department battles a steady tide of crime in a repopulating city, its leaders also must deal with the reality of a diminished force, hampered by attrition after Hurricane Katrina. The Times-Picayune reports that compared with a force of 1,668 before the flood, the department now employs 1,425 officers. Of those, 109 are on sick leave, and top officials say 150 more have put in applications at other departments that have contacted the NOPD for references. What's more, though Gov. Kathleen Blanco said this week that she wants the department to wean itself off the extra help currently provided by State Police and the National Guard, the NOPD has only just begun to reactivate its recruiting and training apparatus.
Three Mississippi lawmakers lawmakers profiting from a lucrative state contract that allows them to use their professional legal services to finalize grants for Hurricane Katrina victims have been named in a complaint filed with the Mississippi Ethics Commission. The (Pascagoula) Mississippi Press reports that Sen. Tommy Robertson, R-Moss Point, Rep.Jim Beckett, R-Bruce, and Rep. Jim Simpson, R-Long Beach, are named in the complaint filed by Edward Hightower of Jackson. The complaint also names Ethics Commission vice chairman Ben Stone, whose blessing Robertson said he received before bidding on the contract.
The husband-and-wife owners of a nursing home near New Orleans where 35 patients died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina listened calmly Wednesday as their attorneys pleaded not guilty for both on 35 counts of negligent homicide and 64 counts of cruelty to the infirm, reports The Associated Press. Salvador and Mabel Mangano were arrested and booked shortly after the Aug. 29, 2005, storm, but they were not charged until late last month because a grand jury could not convene earlier in badly damaged St. Bernard Parish. The couple remain free on bond.
October 3, 2006
The jury pool in south Mississippi has been tainted by "media propaganda" about the insurance industry's handling of claims after Hurricane Katrina, a major insurer argues in a bid to move the trials for several lawsuits spawned by the storm. The Associated Press reports that State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. commissioned a survey of 3,600 registered voters in Mississippi that found a "substantial amount of bias against insurance companies" among Gulf Coast residents after Katrina. The Bloomington, Ill.-based insurer claims the survey demonstrates that it can't get a fair trial in south Mississippi for the lawsuits filed by policyholders whose homes were damaged or destroyed by last year's storm.
September 29, 2006
State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. the nation's largest home and auto insurer, has lost a bid to keep five employees from being questioned about their handling of Hurricane Katrina claims, Bloomberg News reports. A federal judge in Mississippi has denied State Farm's motion for a protective order in a case filed by a homeowner whose claim was denied. Bloomington, Ill.-based State Farm faces dozens of policyholder suits and state and federal investigations of its claims handling. Mississippi Atty. Gen. Jim Hood has convened a grand jury to examine whether insurers, including State Farm, pressured engineering firms to doctor damage reports.
September 28, 2006
As New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin's administration has ramped up for what surely will become one of the biggest code-enforcement chores in American history, interviews with activists and leaders in more than a dozen hard-hit parts of town — not including the devastated Lower 9th Ward, which has a blanket hardship exemption — suggest growing support for a big-stick approach. The Times-Picayune reports that residents also increasingly have started taking on both gutting and enforcement themselves, helping or pressuring their neighbors to gut, repair or tear down their properties.
The Louisiana State Medical Society on Wednesday came out strongly in support of the physician accused of killing four critically ill patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, reports The Associated Press. Louisiana's attorney general has alleged that Dr. Anna Pou and two nurses at Memorial Medical Center injected a lethal cocktail of sedatives into the four bedridden patients after determining they were too ill to be moved. The trio faces second-degree murder charges, pending the outcome of a New Orleans grand jury investigation.
September 27, 2006
The number of valid child abuse and neglect allegations have gone down in Louisiana — most likely the result of a decrease in population following hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Statistics released by the state Department of Social Services show that 20 children died from child abuse or neglect during the 2006 state fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2005, to June 30, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. Anna Fogle, president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse Louisiana, said people have been so focused on storm recovery that reporting child abuse and neglect has taken a lower priority.
Five Detroit area women, an Indiana man and a Mississippi woman fraudulently obtained nearly $30,000 in relief money intended for Hurricane Katrina victims and used the cash to buy cars, narcotics and other items, the federal government alleged in criminal complaints filed Tuesday. The government alleges that none of them had been directly affected by the Aug. 29, 2005 storm that slammed the Gulf Coast, The Detroit News reports. But each obtained between $2,000 and $12,750 in Federal Emergency Management Agency aid, mainly by falsely claiming they lived in New Orleans when the storm hit, according to complaints filed in U.S. District Court.
September 26, 2006
A shortage of prosecutors and other legal staff in Houston is hampering Harris County's efforts to keep up with a growing number of criminal and child abuse cases, the county's two top lawyers said Monday. District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal and County Attorney Mike Stafford will ask Commissioners Court to authorize hiring 49 prosecutors, three civil lawyers and additional clerical staff to assist the new attorneys. Additional cases due solely to the arrival of Hurricane Katrina evacuees did not prompt their requests, but Stafford said child protection cases involving evacuees had created a greater need for more lawyers, reports the Houston Chronicle.
September 22, 2006
A south Alabama woman pleaded guilty to bilking the federal government out of $277,377 in Hurricane Katrina disaster relief funds. Lawanda Trena Williams, 32, pleaded guilty to making false claims to the government, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft, reports The Associated Press. Williams claimed Katrina damages in 30 separate cases, used false Social Security numbers and various names and addresses in Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida to receive thousands of dollars in aid, according to prosecutors.
September 19, 2006
A state judge in Baton Rouge has determined that Bourget's, the politically connected custom motorcycle shop that has sold almost $120 million of trailers to FEMA, does not have to pay a fine for selling travel trailers without a license, according to attorneys who have read the judge's unsigned ruling. The Times-Picayune reports that the decision also appears to let Bourget's off the hook for potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars in Louisiana sales tax, the attorneys said.
September 18, 2006
Maryland State Police say a woman scammed a church, nonprofit organizations and individual donors on Maryland's lower Eastern Shore out of thousands of dollars by making up a story about her children dying during Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press reports that police said 45-year-old Sandra Sue Suiter was arrested last week on suspicion of fraud. Suiter is accused of trying to solicit, and in some cases receiving, charitable donations after claiming that her 3-year-old twins were killed in Slidell, La., during Katrina, investigators said.
September 15, 2006
A federal judge in Mississippi has refused to dismiss two lawsuits that accuse a Texas engineering firm and two engineers of falsifying Hurricane Katrina damage reports to benefit insurance companies. U.S. District Court Judge L.T. Senter Jr. said in an order that the lawsuits against engineering firm Rimkus Consulting Group of Houston and engineers Thomas E. Heifner and Gary L. Bell will go to trial, according to The Associated Press. In the two separate cases, homeowners maintain that engineer Ken Overstreet examined their properties and submitted reports saying Katrina's winds caused 50 percent or more of the damage. Rimkus, Heifner and Bell altered the reports to blame the damage on storm surge so the insurance companies would not have to pay the claims, the lawsuits allege. The defendants deny any wrongdoing.
September 8, 2006
State and federal criminal justice officials united in delivering a message Thursday that they will show "zero tolerance" for illegal abuses of Louisiana's Road Home home-rebuilding grant program and that thumbprint identifications will be taken for all applicants to help stem fraud. The Times-Picayune reports that the approach is a collaborative effort among federal and state officials that encourages citizens to report fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement of money from the federally financed $10 billion pool. State Attorney General Charles Foti said the dishonest practices targeted by the measure include contractors defrauding homeowners or dishonest homeowners filing false claims for assistance.
New Orleans' coroner said Thursday he has the material he needs to present findings to a grand jury that will consider indictments against a doctor and two nurses at Memorial Medical Center accused of killing patients in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina. The findings will include autopsy and toxicology reports and an official classification of the four deaths involved, The Associated Press reports. Dr. Frank Minyard said he is evaluating the materials, but declined to comment on the findings or say when he would present them. Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan has said he would wait to review the findings before asking a grand jury to look into the deaths.
Notices have been posted on 3,025 New Orleans buildings that have not been gutted since Hurricane Katrina or otherwise violate the city's blighted property laws, officials said Thursday in explaining how they have begun to enforce the Aug. 29 deadline set by the City Council for owners to clean up flood-damaged houses and commercial buildings. The Times-Picayune reports that the postings in two of five districts are the first in the city's effort to deal with the tens of thousands of blighted properties. Formal notification letters have been mailed to only about 100 owners; before sending them officials must determine the last known legal address for an owner and check to see whether the owner has applied for a demolition or construction permit for the site. Donna Addkison, the director of planning and development, said the city expects to send out 50 to 100 letters a day indefinitely.
Houston may be hot, unfriendly and frustratingly difficult to navigate, but more than two-thirds of the poorest New Orleans evacuees who fled to the city after Hurricane Katrina plan to stay, a Rice University survey released today shows. Almost 69 percent of the 1,081 people queried in the National Science Foundation-funded study conducted in July by political science professors Rick Wilson and Robert Stein said they likely will remain in Houston, according to the Houston Chronicle. Wilson and Stein say their findings reflect the view of 35,000 to 40,000 evacuees, about one-fourth of the displaced New Orleanians thought to be living in the city.
John Lyons Jr. has decided not to pursue his lawsuit against Mark Morice, a Broadmoor man who said he rescued more than 200 residents from post-Katrina floodwaters after commandeering Lyons' boat. On Tuesday, Lyons' attorney, E. Ronald Mills, filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit seeking payment for direct and indirect costs "attributable to the actual conversion of the boat and motor," as well as for "grief, mental anguish, embarrassment and suffering of the petitioner due to the removal of the boat and motor." In a written statement, Lyons referenced the "media frenzy" surrounding the lawsuit, The Times-Picayune reports.
September 6, 2006
The owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home, arrested in the deaths of 34 patients who perished in Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters, are suing the government, saying federal, state and local officials failed to make sure vulnerable citizens were evacuated as the storm approached. The Los Angeles Times reports that the lawsuit, filed last week, names the Army Corps of Engineers, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, Atty. Gen. Charles C. Foti Jr. and numerous other authorities and agencies.
September 5, 2006
New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina is a harsh place for people with serious mental illnesses, reports The Times-Picayune. As other parts of the health care system have begun to bounce back, the shortage of inpatient beds for the mentally ill remains the biggest hole in a safety net that was decimated by the storm. The controversial decision to close Charity Hospital has meant that mental patients are routinely recycled back to the streets, where they strain the overburdened Police Department and pose a danger to the community and to themselves.
August 31, 2006
Katrina fatigue erupted into anger and frustration Wednesday night, as more than 1,700 residents urged Mayor Bill White to send evacuees home to New Orleans. The Houston Chronicle reports that one year after the city of Houston welcomed at least 250,000 evacuees, more than 100,000 New Orleans natives still remain. West Houston residents who gathered Wednesday at Grace Presbyterian Church to address increases in violent crime over the past year in their community said evacuees are to blame.
August 30, 2006
After Hurricane Katrina, the Tulane Law Clinic was appointed to handle the cases of all prisoners in Orleans Parish who were not represented by an attorney. Thus began the students' foray into a New Orleans justice system ravaged by Katrina, reports Fox News. About 80 percent of New Orleans defendants are supposed to be represented by the public defender's office, which is nearly three-quarters supported by traffic court fines, tickets and fees — all of which evaporated after Katrina, along with the people. The office went from having 42 lawyers to fewer than 10 after the storm — many low paid and part time. It didn't have the manpower nor the funds to visit and represent inmates scattered across the state.
August 28, 2006
Across New Orleans, the buzz of saws and the whine of sanders can be heard almost everywhere, from upper middle class Lakeview to the ravaged Lower 9th Ward. By June 29, more than 56,000 property owners had taken out some sort of permit from City Hall, more than one permit for every three structures in the city, reports The Times-Picayune. Having a permit, of course, is not the same as acting on it. Untold thousands of homeowners snared permits before they were ready to start work for any number of reasons — because they didn't know how long City Hall would give them out for free, because they wanted to be grandfathered in before new elevation standards were adopted to reduce the threat of flood damage, because they were afraid inaction would be used as an excuse for officials to seize their homes.
August 11, 2006
Insurance companies representing more than two-thirds of the Louisiana market have not yet agreed to give policyholders an additional year to file lawsuits to recover damages from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, despite an order from state Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon, officials said Thursday. Donelon has ordered companies writing homeowners insurance in the state to give Katrina victims until Aug. 30, 2007, to file lawsuits and until Sept. 25, 2007, to file lawsuits for Rita claims —about a year longer than state law now allows. The Legislature passed two state laws giving homeowners an additional year to sue their insurance companies for hurricane damages, but the laws are not effective yet because they are being disputed in federal court, reports The Times-Picayune.
August 10, 2006
In an episode that began as a traffic stop for erratic driving in New Orleans, John McCusker, photographer for The Times-Picayune, was halted, pinned a police officer between cars, fled and drove into several cars and construction signs before being stopped again and finally subdued with a Taser gun. In both stops, the police say, he begged officers to shoot him, telling them he did not have enough insurance money to rebuild his home. The public unraveling of a well-known local photographer shined light again on the troubled state of mental health in New Orleans, according to The New York Times. The state has estimated that the city has lost more than half its psychiatrists, social workers, psychologists and other mental health workers, many of whom relocated after Hurricane Katrina.
July 31, 2006
Declaring a state of emergency in the New Orleans criminal justice system, an Orleans Parish judge Friday said he will begin releasing poor defendants awaiting trial on a case-by-case basis Aug. 29, the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Criminal District Court has a backlog of 6,000 cases and growing, while the public defender's office is barely recovering from going broke after Katrina and losing almost all of its attorneys. At least hundreds of indigent defendants remain jailed without court-appointed representation. "It is a pathetic and shameful state of affairs the criminal justice system finds itself," Judge Arthur Hunter ruled from his bench after a hearing that Gov. Kathleen Blanco declined to attend, despite having been subpoenaed. "Facts, reports and studies have concluded constitutional rights are being violated." Only defendants who have not gone to trial will be eligible for release, Hunter said, and release from jail does not mean the defendant is freed from any charges. Prosecutors said they will appeal the ruling, The Times-Picayune reports.
July 25, 2006
Doctors and nurses might not stay behind to care for patients during another New Orleans hurricane in fear they could be the next targets of Louisiana prosecutors. A doctor and two nurses are facing murder charges, accused of administering a "lethal cocktail" of drugs to four patients at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina hit the city. For medical professionals, the accusations represent a new danger of hurricane duty some are unwilling to face, according to Reuters. In addition to the specter of prison, potential dangers include difficulty with careers and civil suits.
July 21, 2006
In mid-September, Dr. Anna Maria Pou began to feel the pressure of a fledgling investigation into alleged mercy killings at New Orleans Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina. She was advised by a colleague to hire an attorney and "be forthcoming." But she first sought legal advice from lawyers working for Tenet, the health care company that supplemented her salary, reports The Times-Picayune. The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in April that attorney-client privilege protected some parts of her conversations, but not others. Records show at least one Tenet employee was subpoenaed as a state witness and questioned about what the doctor said about her doings on Sept. 1. Court records do not show what Pou said to Tenet lawyers, but they do include some details about what was said to her. During one call, a Tenet attorney told her: "I don't represent you. I am a corporate attorney. I suggest you get your own counsel."
July 20, 2006
It has been a month since the National Guard and Louisiana State Police appeared in New Orleans, reports The Times-Picayune. Their arrival freed up entire squads of the New Orleans Police Department to attack crime in the city's most dangerous neighborhoods. Since then, arrests in some crime-plagued neighborhoods have almost doubled, and the number of murders has been nearly cut in half, police said. During the 30 days before the June 20 deployment of the National Guard into more desolate areas of the city to contain looting and burglaries, there were 21 murders in the city. In the month after their arrival, from June 20 to Wednesday, there have been 11 killings.
July 19, 2006
Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti Jr. announced second-degree murder charges against Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Lori L. Budo and Cheri Landry on Tuesday, alleging that in the days following Hurricane Katrina they killed four patients by giving them a lethal mix of drugs at flooded New Orleans Memorial Medical Center. "We're talking about people that pretended that maybe they were God," Foti said. "This is not euthanasia. It's homicide." An affidavit said tests determined that lethal doses of morphine paired with another central nervous system depressant were administered on Sept. 1 to four patients. Sources have told CNN the conditions at the hospital were dire, and the killings allegedly were carried out to speed evacuation. Attorneys for Landry and Pou each said that their clients plan to contest the charges.
July 10, 2006
Along a funky stretch of Magazine Street in New Orleans, shopkeepers are on the alert for criminals dressed to steal: A gang of cross-dressing shoplifters that has been terrorizing clothing stores for months. Rather than brandish weapons, they have used props such as fake babies or real toddlers as distractions in at least six robberies since shops reopened after Hurricane Katrina. USA TODAY reports that the designer purse-toting bandits recently took about $2,000 in merchandise from Turncoats, a store that sells tank tops and t-shirts. But with the city's recent spike in violent crime, tracking them down has not been a priority for police.
July 6, 2006
With the verified sexual-assault count among Hurricane Katrina evacuees nearing 70, police and women's advocates in the Gulf Coast area say the risk of violence against evacuee children and women is intensified by crowded, temporary housing 10 months after the storm. Lt. David Benelli, commander of the New Orleans Police Department Sex Crimes Unit, said sex-assault charges against people who are not strangers to their accusers are mounting. In January, the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault asked the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a list of Katrina evacuees so it could urge those witnessing or suffering sexual violence to contact them for help, but director Judy Benitez said FEMA sent a form letter denying the request, Women's eNews reports.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco will announce today a $200 million restoration of Jackson Barracks, a project expected spur redevelopment in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and Arabi areas, as well as enabling the Louisiana National Guard to return its state headquarters to the complex. The huge repair project, which will be in accordance with FEMA guidelines, will demonstrate to property owners how to repair shattered homes and build new ones according to new hurricane codes, Blanco said. The 100-acre historic base took on between 4 feet and 8 feet of water after Hurricane Katrina, The Times-Picayune reports. The flooding forced the Louisiana National Guard to temporarily move its state headquarters to Camp Beauregard, near Pineville.
June 7, 2006
They are the backbone of post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction: workers who converge at dawn and wait to be picked up for 14-hour shifts of hauling debris, ripping out drywall and nailing walls. But because many are in the country illegally, immigrant workers rebuilding New Orleans are especially vulnerable to exploitation, according to a study released Tuesday by professors at Tulane University and the University of California at Berkeley, reports The Associated Press.
June 5, 2006
Seven months after authorities began investigating allegations that Louisiana law-enforcement officers might have gotten disaster benefits for Hurricane Katrina to which they weren't entitled, there have been no arrests or exonerations. Federal agents took over the investigation the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office started and the Baton Rouge Police Department joined in October, according to The (Baton Rogue) Advocate. The probe was prompted in part by a Baton Rouge Union of Police Local 237 memorandum, disseminated via Police Department e-mail, in September encouraging its members to apply for hurricane benefits from the American Red Cross "whether you sustained a loss or not" and refers to financial assistance debit cards for Hurricane Katrina victims as "gift cards," and insists they were a special benefit for union members.
May 31, 2006
A Houston federal judge refused Tuesday to order federal officials to continue an emergency housing program for Hurricane Katrina evacuees nationwide until June 30. The decision by U.S. District Judge David Hittner means that more than 2,000 evacuees will lose their housing assistance Thursday, according to the Houston Chronicle. The Houston law firm Caddell & Chapman is representing the plaintiffs and had sought a temporary restraining order — effective for a maximum of 20 days — to give evacuees more time in FEMA's emergency program while the court considers the plaintiffs' request for long-term relief.
May 30, 2006
About 55,000 families displaced by Hurricane Katrina face the end of a federally funded rental assistance program, in which local governments issued 12-month housing and utility vouchers. Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency began issuing letters to thousands of evacuees telling them their aid would be terminated. The vouchers are to end Wednesday in most of the country, reports The Washington Post. That decision, says a class-action lawsuit filed by the Houston law firm of Caddell & Chapman and a consortium of public interest law groups, will create "widespread homelessness" and violates FEMA's statutory obligations to provide temporary housing assistance to hurricane victims. Sixty-two members of the House filed a brief last week supporting the suit. It says that FEMA "continues to engage in a process that is marked by inefficiency, a lack of discernable standards and seeming disregard for the plight of the vulnerable survivors who are depending on the aid that FEMA is statutorily obligated to provide."
May 26, 2006
Provisions in a State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. policy that exclude certain damage from Hurricane Katrina are unenforceable, a federal judge in Mississippi has ruled. A couple whose Long Beach, Miss. home was damaged by the Aug. 29 storm is suing State Farm for denying their claim, arguing that the wording of their policy's "flood exclusions" are ambiguous and cannot be enforced. U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr., in a ruling released Wednesday, said that State Farm cannot rely on an "ambiguous" language in a clause that is used to introduce what is excluded from coverage in its policies. The judge agreed with State Farm that tidal surge is not covered, The Associated Press reports. However, he said a policy clause that purports to deny coverage when wind acts in any sequence with an excluded event, such as tidal surge, to cause damage is ambiguous.
Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. faces a lawsuit filed Thursday by 243 policyholders who claim they were fraudulently denied coverage for Hurricane Katrina damage, according to The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. The lawsuit says Nationwide reeled in customers with the promise of "all-risk" coverage, including a "hurricane deductible." The company then refused to pay the policyholders for most, or in some cases all, Hurricane Katrina damage, the lawsuit says. In denying claims, Nationwide cited policy provisions that exclude coverage for water damage and for damage arising from "weather conditions" that may contribute, the suit asserts. Nationwide used a generic report from Haag Engineering that concluded "storm surge" caused all property damage to deny claims, the lawsuit says. The policyholders maintain hurricane winds of up to 140 mph slammed the Coast for four to six hours before the storm surge arrived, destroying or severely compromising their homes.
May 25, 2006
For tens of thousands of Gulf Coast homeowners, rebuilding can't start without a few crucial pieces of paper. Nearly every form of post-Katrina aid requires copies of records such as deeds, insurance policies, mortgages, federal tax liens and military discharges, according to The Associated Press. Before storm victims could seek help, officials in some of the hardest-hit parts of Louisiana and Mississippi had to salvage millions of records that Katrina soaked when it flooded courthouses and offices.
May 24, 2006
New Orleans plans to hold its first criminal trial since Hurricane Katrina possibly next week, the first step in solving a judicial crisis in which thousands of suspects have been jailed for months without trials. Criminal District Court Chief Judge Calvin Johnson says courts will reopen in the downtown courthouse, which was flooded after the Aug. 29 storm. He says 3,000 jury summonses have been mailed, and criminal trials could resume soon after Memorial Day weekend. It's unclear who will be tried or how they will be chosen, USA TODAY reports. Defense lawyers, however, warn the effort may stall quickly. They say that Katrina ripped apart an already troubled judicial system and that it's unclear whether defendants can get fair trials.
After getting knocked on its heels by the surprising success of post-Katrina insurance overhaul bills in the Louisiana Senate, the insurance industry has regrouped and launched a formidable coalition for a House fight against proposals it says would make it harder for homeowners and businesses to find coverage. The House Insurance Committee today is expected to vote on at least two of the most significant proposals, both of which are in reaction to insurance controversies in Hurricane Katrina's wake, reports The Times-Picayune. Louisiana already is teetering on the brink of a massive shortage of insurance coverage because of both the historical and recently demonstrated risk from storms, and these bills could worsen the situation, according to the Coalition to Insure Louisiana. Proposals opposed by the coalition include Senate Bill 693, which would restore the Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission’s authority to decide on premium price changes of an average of 10 percent of less; and Senate Bill 707 and House Bill 1358, which would impose fewer restrictions on courts when deciding the meaning of “bad faith” in lawsuits disputing the settling or adjusting of claims.
May 23, 2006
Hurricane Katrina took his house, his courtroom and, Judge Arthur L. Hunter Jr. says, his faith in the way his city treats poor people facing criminal charges. He says nine months after the storm, more than a thousand jailed defendants have had no access to lawyers because the public defender system is short of money and staffing, without a computer system or files or even a list of clients. Hunter is moving to let some of the defendants without lawyers out of jail, reports The New York Times. He has suspended prosecutions in most cases involving public defenders. And, alone among a dozen criminal court judges, he has granted a petition to free a prisoner facing serious charges without counsel, and is considering others. The district attorney's office opposes letting defendants back out on the street, saying the court should find them lawyers. But Hunter said he has had little luck finding private firms willing to take on most indigents' cases.
New Orleans police got a reminder of the challenges facing the local justice system two weeks ago, when they finally pried open the rusty doors of their department's evidence rooms, which had been flooded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina last year. Much of what was inside was a moldy mess, USA TODAY reports. It's unclear how much of the evidence will be salvageable. The damaged evidence represents only a small part of the difficulty in restarting their criminal justice system, which is unable to guarantee thousands of crime suspects their right to a speedy trial and does not have nearly enough public defenders for low-income defendants. As dire as the situation seems now, some say Katrina has given New Orleans an opportunity to repair a criminal court system that did not serve low-income residents well even before the hurricane swept in from the Gulf of Mexico.
May 19, 2006
Six Hurricane Katrina evacuees will ask a judge to order the Federal Emergency Management Agency to continue housing assistance for thousands of evacuees threatened with loss of benefits and potential homelessness, according to the Houston Chronicle. A class action lawsuit, expected to be filed today in federal court in Houston, says FEMA's response to hurricanes Katrina and Rita has been "wholly inept." It echoes complaints by housing advocates, city officials and others that the agency has unlawfully disqualified thousands of evacuees from its housing programs and has provided confusing and contradictory information. At the heart of the case is FEMA's decision to shift evacuees from a locally administered voucher program, which pays rent and utilities, to an individual assistance program that pays only rent and has stricter eligibility requirements.
May 17, 2006
Louisiana consumers have until Aug. 29, the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, to resolve their storm-related homeowners and business insurance claims unless state lawmakers pass legislation putting off the deadline for another year, reports The Times-Picayune. Most insurance policies carry a one-year statute of limitations, which means policyholders have up to a year after the loss to file any lawsuits disputing their settlement. Once that date passes, it's hard for consumers to negotiate for more money because insurance companies know their policyholders have no legal recourse. The one-year deadline isn't usually a source of contention. But the scope of Katrina's devastation, as well as 24-hour curfews that prevented families and adjusters from accessing some properties for weeks after the storm, slowed down the insurance process. In addition, many policyholders waited for FEMA to come out with its latest flood map advisory — released last month — before beginning to rebuild. And many others continue to wait for grants the Louisiana Recovery Authority has said it will make available to homeowners.
May 15, 2006
On Aug. 29, 2005, New Orleans was on track to finish the year as the deadliest city in America, again. Crime had become atomized — it was part of the culture, the air, the dark humor of the place, Time magazine reports. Under normal circumstances, criminologists believe, there are two ways to stop a cycle of gang violence: either dismantle the gangs or disrupt their business. In New Orleans, both happened overnight. Hurricane Katrina sent the criminals fleeing in all directions. So now there was a mystery: What would happen next? What would become of the criminal population when stripped of its neighborhood affiliations, its drug suppliers and a well-worn black-market infrastructure?
May 11, 2006
Federal investigators from several departments, along with state and local officials on the Gulf Coast, will spend years combing through thousands of tips for possible contracting fraud in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, witnesses told a House panel Wednesday. Already, more than 260 people — including some government employees — have been charged with a range of crimes because of investigations by the Homeland Security and Justice departments, the FBI and the Secret Service, among others, reports GovExec.com. However, additional personnel, including investigators and prosecutors, will be needed. The task force is headquartered in Baton Rouge, La., and because all departments and agencies — from federal to local levels — share databases, once allegations lead to charges, each investigator is notified to see if additional inquiries are being conducted elsewhere, Alice Fisher, chair of Justice's Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force said. Because some contracts will continue for years, the task force's effort will continue indeterminably, as will the need for continued support and personnel.
May 10, 2006
More than 100 teenagers held in detention during Hurricane Katrina endured horrific conditions in the storm's aftermath, including standing for hours in filthy floodwater, having nothing to eat and drink for three to five days, and being forced to consume the floodwaters as a result, according to a report released Tuesday. The report was prepared by the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, a group that has long advocated changes in the state's troubled juvenile system, and based on interviews with more than 60 teenagers held at the Orleans Parish Prison during the storm, as well as with prison staff members. The New York Times reports that youths who were interviewed described water rising in their darkened cells and a scramble onto top bunks to avoid it. They also said that when they were finally rescued — in some cases, after several days — they experienced dizziness and dehydration because of lack of food. One reported being "roped together" with plastic handcuffs as he and others were led out through neck-high water.
New Orleans had 30 murders this year through April, reports The Associated Press. That is less than half of the 81 recorded during the first four months of 2005. But New Orleans' population these days is less than half of what it was before Hurricane Katrina. While there were only 17 murders in January through March of this year, there were an alarming 13 slayings in April. That is the most for any month since the Aug. 29 storm, though still well below the monthly average of 22 in 2003 and 2004. May has already seen three slayings. New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley insisted at a news conference last week that murders and other violent crimes per person — figures that take the reduced population into account — are down from a year ago. But that was based on January-through-March figures alone. "We are not seeing a return to the old days," Riley said. "This city is still the safest it has ever been."
A lawsuit filed Tuesday by nearly 700 Mississippi Gulf Coast homeowners accuses State Farm Insurance Co. of using a "one-size-fits-all" engineering report as the basis for refusing to cover damage to homes destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, reports The Associated Press. The suit alleges that the insurer denied many of the homeowners' claims without investigating whether Katrina's wind or water was responsible for damage to their homes. An engineering firm hired by State Farm drafted a generic that concludes all damage to homes on Mississippi's Gulf Coast was caused by "storm surge" and not hurricane-force winds. State Farm's policies cover wind damage, but storm surge is considered floodwater and is excluded.
May 9, 2006
For poor criminal defendants, "justice is simply unavailable" in New Orleans now, concludes a Justice Department report that calls for a major overhaul of the city's public defender system. The report says to have an adequate system the city needs 70 full-time public defenders, more than six times the number of part-time defenders it has now and a $10-million infusion of cash, reports the Los Angeles Times. New Orleans had 39 public defenders before Hurricane Katrina struck last August, all but eight of whom were laid off because of a funding crisis precipitated by the storm.
May 8, 2006
Early voting for the New Orleans mayoral runoff election starts today under a seemingly more cordial atmosphere than during the historic post-Katrina primary last month, reports The Times-Picayune. Voters can cast early ballots in person today through Saturday in New Orleans and at 10 satellite polling locations across Louisiana. More than 12,000 voters cast early ballots leading up to the primary, as several civil rights groups unsuccessfully sought to defer the election and Secretary of State Al Ater predicted that its legitimacy would almost surely be challenged in court. However, those groups have shifted their focus from legal fights to wary cooperation with state election officials.
Violence among Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston accounted for nearly a quarter of homicides in the city so far this year, police officials said Friday. Since Jan. 1, police have investigated 124 homicides, 29 of which involved evacuees as victims or attackers, said Capt. Dale Brown of the Houston Police Department. There were 103 homicides over the same period last year; without the evacuee-related deaths this year, the city would have experienced a 7.8 percent decrease, reports the Houston Chronicle.
April 28, 2006
State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. is attempting to delay a lawsuit that seeks to represent all Gulf Coast policyholders denied coverage for Hurricane Katrina's damage even though they had "all risk" homeowners' policies, an attorney suing the company contends. State Farm is requesting delays in U.S. District Court that would put the lawsuit on hold for an additional four months, says attorney Richard Phillips. Phillips wants U.S. District Court Judge L.T. Senter Jr. to decide whether the company's policy language covers all of Hurricane Katrina's damage, as he contends, or none of it when water contributed to the damage, as State Farm maintains, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald.
April 26, 2006
Corps of Engineers on Tuesday, accusing the agency of ignoring repeated warnings that a navigation channel it built would turn into a "hurricane highway," reports The Associated Press. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in New Orleans and several prominent trial lawyers from Louisiana, Florida and California are backing it. At issue is a 76-mile shipping channel built in the early 1960s as a short-cut to New Orleans. For years, environmentalists and emergency planners have blasted the Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet, or MR-GO, as a destructive force because it has eroded enormous tracts of wetlands and increased the threat of flooding.
April 25, 2006
Legal protests about potential voter disenfranchisement were still trickling in hours before New Orleans’ polls opened for Saturday's primary, reports The Times-Picayune. So it's no wonder that the analyses Monday came along with a slew of promises that new complaints will be filed on behalf of displaced residents who could not vote. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, who for months has railed against the Legislature's refusal to set up out-of-state polling places in such evacuee strongholds as Houston and Atlanta, offered the most high-profile vow: to protest the federal court-approved balloting allowances — such as voting by fax and at Louisiana satellite locations — which Jackson said did not fulfill requirements set forth in the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
April 20, 2006
Seven months after two powerful hurricanes blew through the Gulf Coast, many elected officials, law enforcement agencies and residents say Texas is nearing the end of its ability to play good neighbor without compensation, The New York Times reports. Houston's municipal seams are straining due to the area's 150,000 new residents from New Orleans, officials say. Crime was already on the rise there before the hurricane, but police say that evacuees were victims or suspects in two-thirds of the 30 percent increase in murders since September. The public schools are also struggling to educate thousands of new students.
A federal judge who would have presided over some lawsuits that policyholders filed against insurance companies after Hurricane Katrina is instead waging his own personal legal battle against the insurer of his Gulf Coast home, reports The Associated Press. U.S. District Court Judge Louis Guirola and his wife filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. for denying his claim and refusing to cover damage to his storm-demolished home in Long Beach. Guirola's lawsuit is like many spawned by the debate over whether Katrina's wind or water was responsible for damage to tens of thousands of homes.
Under pressure from the National Rifle Association, New Orleans police this week began returning guns confiscated after Hurricane Katrina, reports The Associated Press. The police department is making the guns available three days a week. At the close of the second day Wednesday, police said only 17 of about 700 weapons had been returned. Police and soldiers removed guns from houses after the storm flooded the city, and they confiscated guns from some evacuees. The NRA and other groups sued the city, saying it took away people's means of protection amid the lawlessness that gripped New Orleans.
April 19, 2006
When the Watersmark apartment complex of Gulfport, Miss., advertised its "grand reopening" five months after Hurricane Katrina, the announcement stunned tenants living there in storm-damaged apartments. The Associated Press reports that weeks earlier, they say, they were told by the management that they had to get out because the building was uninhabitable. With the grand reopening, it suddenly became clear "they wanted me out of here so they can remodel the apartment and raise the rent," said Cassandra Plummer, who staved off eviction after her lawyer protested.
April 17, 2006
Every week or so in New Orleans, the chief criminal court judge and his staff discover someone in jail who shouldn't be, reports The Washington Post. For the most part, Chief District Judge Calvin Johnson said, they are indigent defendants who were arrested on misdemeanor charges just before or after Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29. They often lack attorneys and their cases get "lost" in the system, he said, leaving the accused to serve weeks or months of extra incarceration. Around the courthouse, it's known as "doing Katrina time."
The storm and the flooding that came with Hurricane Katrina uprooted families in New Orleans, leaving them in staggering states of stress and uncertainty, reports The New York Times. For some families, already torn apart by separation and divorce, the fallout has been especially damaging, producing painful new battles over child custody and visitation, financial support and division of assets. After the damaged Orleans Parish Civil District Court set up operations near Baton Rouge in October, custody and support cases began to mount. Since January, when the court returned to New Orleans, judges and lawyers say they have seen scores of family disputes related to the storm. Other parishes have experienced similar surges.
April 14, 2006
Provisions in Allstate Insurance Co. policies that exclude damage from Hurricane Katrina's floodwaters are "valid and enforceable," a federal judge in Mississippi has ruled in a setback for Gulf Coast policyholders whose claims were denied by the insurer, according to The Associated Press. A couple whose Gulfport home was damaged by the storm is suing Allstate for denying their claim, arguing that the wording of their policy's "flood exclusions" are ambiguous and cannot be enforced. U.S. District Judge L.T. Senter Jr. rejected that argument, ruling Tuesday that the terms of Allstate's policies are "clear and unambiguous" in excluding damage from "tidal waters" such as those that Katrina pushed ashore from the Mississippi Sound, inundating thousands of homes.
As many as 3,000 Hurricane Katrina evacuees now in Texas are on probation or parole in their home state of Louisiana, but most are living under no form of supervision. State officials are providing their names to local authorities because they could be suspects in new crimes, reports the Dallas Morning News. In letters to many of the state's police chiefs this week, the Texas Department of Public Safety provides the names and criminal histories of the evacuees and urges local authorities to consult the list to "develop possible suspects for certain crime problems that have advanced since Hurricane Katrina."
See Dallas Morning News article
April 12, 2006
Professional engineer James K. "Ken" Overstreet said his assessments of property damaged by Hurricane Katrina were altered without his permission and, in several cases, his signature was forged on documents insurance companies used to minimize or deny policyholder claims, reports The (Biloxi) Sun Herald. Overstreet worked as a contractor for S&B Infrastructure. In turn, S&B contracted with Rimkus Consulting Group Inc. to supply damage assessments to insurance companies. S&B, he said, parroted orders from Rimkus. "If they could get by with changing the wind to surge, they would do it," said Overstreet, who has talked with the state Attorney General's Office in connection with a Hurricane Katrina insurance-fraud investigation. "If you had affidavits in there where people saw houses blowing down, sometimes they'd just take those out entirely. They took out whole exhibits."
April 7, 2006
Mississippi Atty. Gen. Jim Hood said he has convened a grand jury to investigate whether insurers, including State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., improperly denied Hurricane Katrina claims by pressuring engineering firms to doctor damage reports. Bloomberg News reports that Hood is examining whether insurers asked engineering firms that work with claims adjusters to alter reports about how homes were damaged or destroyed by the Aug. 29 storm, the insurance industry's most costly disaster.
April 4, 2006
Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti threatened Monday to sue the federal government for giving the state “the runaround” on auditing financial records related to the hurricane recovery, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. FEMA has sent a $156 million bill for the state’s share of storm expenses. It is the first installment in what is expected to be a $1 billion bill. Last week, FEMA gave the state a two-month extension on paying the $156 million.
April 3, 2006
As they await federally funded renovations of flooded courthouses, jails and police stations, the business of local law enforcement in New Orleans is being conducted in a strange assortment of alternative housing and temporary offices, reports The Dallas Morning News. The New Orleans Police Department recently moved its headquarters out of an elegant hotel on Bourbon Street and into a collection of FEMA trailers at a former brake inspection station. The coroner's office, which has done more than 800 autopsies of storm victims in a rural town upriver from New Orleans, is expected to return to the city soon. Then, coroner Frank Minyard — himself presumed dead in the chaotic days after Katrina — will take up residence in office space leased from a local funeral home, state and local officials say.
See Dallas Morning News article
March 31, 2006
The American Red Cross, plagued by continuing controversy over its Hurricane Katrina relief effort, said yesterday that it is turning over to federal law enforcement officials results of its investigation into possible wrongdoing at a food and warehouse operation in New Orleans, reports The Washington Post. It also thanked volunteers who brought the matter to their attention. The embattled charity has spent much of the last six months defending how it used $2.1 billion in donations it received for victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.
March 30, 2006
The FBI has launched a multifaceted investigation into post-Hurricane Katrina spending in St. Bernard Parish, examining several public contracts. Among them is a $370 million debris pickup deal that parish officials granted without bids five days after the storm and gave again to the same firm later last year despite receiving lower offers, according to interviews with competitors and a parish official who have been questioned by federal agents. The Times-Picayune reports that agents also are scrutinizing parish spending on temporary trailers, employee overtime and a no-bid contract for removal of hazardous waste and sewage, the interviews indicate.
A Louisiana Senate committee on Wednesday rejected a bill pushed by civil rights groups to make it easier for displaced New Orleans residents to vote in the mayoral election next month. The Associated Press reports that the panel rejected a bill to create "satellite voting centers" in other states so that registered voters living elsewhere could cast ballots without traveling back to Louisiana for the April 22 election. The Rev. Jesse Jackson testified that forcing displaced voters — most of whom are black — to pay for transportation back to New Orleans amounted to a "poll tax" like those from the Jim Crow era.
March 29, 2006
State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. is "twisting the arms" of engineering firms to produce reports that will allow the company to deny Hurricane Katrina claims, a special assistant Mississippi attorney general said in Circuit Court Tuesday. The (Biloxi) Sun Herald reports that Tim Howard, special assistant to Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, said confidential informants have been cooperating with a grand jury investigation into fraudulent insurance practices.
The Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office in Louisiana has fielded several reports of thieves stealing construction supplies, fixtures, appliances and even front-end loaders from homes under renovation after Hurricane Katrina, reports The Times-Picayune. And residents have voiced numerous complaints that they've had personal property and valuables stolen from their homes while a parade of strangers come and go to repair their storm-ravaged houses.
March 28, 2006
The riotous looting that swept the area right after Hurricane Katrina is long gone, but in its place is opportunistic — even organized — thievery of everything from construction tools to carved mantelpieces of damaged homes. The Christian Science Monitor reports that the overall crime rate along the Louisiana-Mississippi border has doubled in recent months even as violent crime has dropped 80 percent since the storm, according to the New Orleans Police Department. In response, police and area residents throughout the storm-damaged region are taking some unusual steps to prevent looting.
See Christian Science Monitor article
A federal judge whose own home was flooded after Hurricane Katrina has rejected pleas to delay New Orleans’ April 22 elections, saying he shared residents' "burning desire for completeness." The Associated Press reports that civil rights groups had hoped to block what would be the city's first municipal elections since Katrina, arguing that too many black residents won't be able to participate.
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March 27, 2006
With less than a month left before New Orleans' first elections since Hurricane Katrina, the plan and the date for the balloting are still in dispute, reports The Associated Press. Civil rights groups were expected to return to federal court Monday to try to block the April 22 mayoral election, arguing that too many black residents scattered by Katrina will be unable to take part. The election has turned into a test of the city's — and the nation's — ability to hold an election in the midst of rebuilding a major city with more than half of the population displaced.
March 24, 2006
Amid growing concern about the city’s homicide rate and overburdened social services, a new poll finds Houstonians increasingly weary and wary of the 150,000 Louisiana evacuees who landed there after Hurricane Katrina, reports the Houston Chronicle. Three-quarters of Harris County residents surveyed by Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg say the influx of Katrina evacuees, many of whom remain seven months after landfall, has put a "considerable strain" on the Houston community. Additionally, two-thirds say evacuees bear responsibility for "a major increase in violent crime," and twice as many local residents believe Houston will be "worse off" rather than "better off" if most evacuees remain there permanently.
An increase in drug busts and murders has people in New Orleans worried about the return of crime to the city, National Public Radio reports. Police admit they're concerned that while old criminals are gone, there may be new ones who see an opportunity to penetrate a drug market abandoned after Hurricane Katrina.
Hear National Public Radio report
March 23, 2006
Police in New York arrested a Queens woman yesterday, saying she had falsely claimed to be a victim of Hurricane Katrina and had taken thousands of dollars in aid from state and federal agencies, reports The New York Times. The woman, Donna Fenton, 37, was charged by Brooklyn prosecutors with several counts of welfare fraud and grand larceny, the latest additions to a long record of fraud, arrests and legal disputes stretching from Mississippi to New York. Fenton was the subject of an article in The Times on March 8, more than a month after Brooklyn prosecutors, prompted by suspicious officials at the city's welfare agency, began investigating her.
A Mississippi couple who got conflicting reports from an engineering firm about how their home was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina filed a lawsuit Wednesday accusing State Farm Insurance Co. of manipulating those reports to deny their claim. The Associated Press reports that the lawsuit, which comes as Mississippi's attorney general investigates insurance companies for "fraudulent" handling of post-Katrina claims, is one of many spawned by a fierce debate over whether homes were destroyed by the Aug. 29 hurricane's wind or water.
Parish's seven-assessor system and recommended consolidating the offices as a long overdue change. The Times-Picayune reports that in a two-page report, the nonprofit watchdog organization said the current system wastes money and is prone to corruption and inefficiency. It also noted that Orleans is the only parish in Louisiana with more than one assessor, despite having similar and in some cases smaller workloads. The seven-assessor system in Orleans Parish has become a hot target in the wake of Katrina. A BGR study issued in January concluded that post-Hurricane Katrina assessments in Orleans Parish were wildly inconsistent from district to district. The report, which examined only unflooded areas, determined that the haphazard pattern of appraisals in the city, already well-documented, had only gotten worse since the storm.
March 22, 2006
Two men pleaded guilty Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Hattiesburg, Miss., to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery of a federal official for allegedly making a deal to falsify debris removal documents after Hurricane Katrina, The Associated Press reports. Mitchell Glen Kendrix, of Memphis, Tenn., and Paul Darrell Nelson of Lisbon, Maine, could be sentenced each to up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Prosecutors said Kendrix was working as a quality assurance representative for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the Hintonville dump site in Perry County, Miss., when he allegedly accepted payments from Nelson, a debris removal subcontractor.
March 21, 2006
The number of people from the Bakersfield, Calif., who have been indicted in a scheme that bilked thousands of dollars from an American Red Cross fund designated for Hurricane Katrina victims has risen to 61, federal authorities said. The Associated Press reports that eight people were indicted last week in federal court in Fresno on charges of wire fraud and filing fake claims to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. During the aftermath of Katrina, the Red Cross rushed to set up call centers across the country that provided qualifying victims with a personal identification number they then presented to receive aid funds from Western Union, prosecutor Stanley A. Boone said. The Red Cross contacted the FBI after it performed an audit and discovered an unusually high number of claims were being paid out at Western Union outlets in the Bakersfield area, even though not many evacuees had moved there.
March 20, 2006
Acknowledging that it wrongly distributed tens of millions of dollars in hurricane relief last year, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has said that it would try to recoup aid from thousands of individuals or families who fraudulently or otherwise wrongly collected money. The New York Times reports that officials at the agency said it was a routine step taken after any disaster because in the rush to distribute emergency aid, benefits were occasionally paid twice to the same family or to people who were ineligible.
March 17, 2006
Hurricane Katrina blew most of New Orleans' drug dealers and violent criminals out of the city, but law enforcement officials said at a news conference Thursday that it will take a watchful eye from the public and police to keep a potentially more dangerous crop of thugs from invading the city's streets. They said the writing already is on the walls, scrawled across the city's landscape in graffiti spray painted by gang members and others eager to announce their arrival, reports The Times-Picayune.
A high-profile litigator said Thursday that a whistleblower is helping him build a case against insurers who denied thousands of claims from policyholders whose homes were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. Richard ''Dickie'' Scruggs, who helped secure a multibillion-dollar settlement against tobacco companies in the 1990s, told the Associated Press that the whistleblower gave him copies of internal reports prepared by engineers hired by an insurance company to inspect storm-damaged homes. He did not identify the whistleblower or the person's employer. The reports indicate the company pressured engineers to change conclusions so claims could be denied, Scruggs said.
Over the bitter objections of some black leaders, the U.S. Justice Department approved a plan Thursday for New Orleans' first elections since Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press reports that the department still needs to approve a few polling place changes, but otherwise gave its blessing to plans to hold elections for mayor, City Council and other posts on April 22. Department officials also said they will send observers to monitor the balloting.
March 16, 2006
Amid the continuing debate over the role of women's education in American colleges, six Tulane University alumnae and nine students filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to block the school from dismantling a historic women's college as part of a sweeping restructuring plan launched after Hurricane Katrina. The Los Angeles Times reports that the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, seeks an injunction blocking Tulane from closing its 120-year-old H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, one of the nation's first degree-granting colleges for women. The suit also seeks to bar the university from tinkering with Newcomb's endowment, which has been estimated at $40 million and is separate from Tulane's $745-million endowment.
March 15, 2006
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has won his fight to keep his lawsuit, which aims to force insurance companies to pay for damage caused by Katrina's storm surge, in state court. The (Biloxi) Sun Herald reports that because the case involves the federal flood insurance program, it had been sent to federal court, where the insurance industry was expected to have the upper hand. Hood's lawsuit, filed mid-September, seeks to force insurance companies to cover flood losses despite policy exclusions for flood damage.
March 14, 2006
For DynCorp International LLC and other private security companies, the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, like Iraq, is a land of opportunity, reports The Washington Post. Hired shortly to protect several New Orleans hospitals, its first domestic security job, the Texas firm has earned about $14 million from work in the Gulf Coast since Katrina, though not all has involved security. Blackwater USA, which protected the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq and lost four employees in a 2004 ambush in Fallujah, earned about $42 million through the end of December on a contract with Federal Protective Service, a unit of the Department of Homeland Security, to provide security to FEMA sites. Most of the 330 contract guards now working in Louisiana are employed by the company.
March 10, 2006
Tenet Healthcare, the nation's second-largest health care company — besieged for years by allegations of Medicare fraud and overbilling taxpayers — now finds itself as the operator of a New Orleans hospital where some doctors and staff are under investigation for allegedly deliberately killing patients in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. CNN reports that Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti is investigating what he calls "credible" allegations that patients at Tenet’s Memorial Medical Center were euthanized in the frantic days following the storm. Foti has told CNN he has "a very good case." Tenet sent a letter to CNN on Wednesday stating that it understands from the Louisiana Attorney General's Office that it is not a target of the investigation and insists that all of its Gulf Coast hospitals, including Memorial, were prepared in advance for the hurricane.
March 6, 2006
A Galveston hotel operator was charged with fraudulently billing the government $232,000 to house supposed hurricane evacuees who were actually regular guests, relatives or friends — or who never stayed at the Texas spot at all. The Associated Press reports that federal prosecutors said the indictment against Daniel Yeh, 52, was the first to accuse a hotel operator of defrauding the Federal Emergency Management Agency's public assistance program.
March 3, 2006
George Barisich, president of the United Commercial Fisherman's Association, has been selling anti-FEMA T-shirts since last fall, a reflection of his frustration with the federal government's response to the storm that left him homeless and unemployed. But on Feb. 1, when he handed a shirt to a fellow Katrina victim as he was picking up canned goods at a charity's relief tent, Barisich found himself in trouble with the government, USA TODAY reports. He was cited by a group of Homeland Security officials for selling a T-shirt on federal property — in this case, near a FEMA center in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Chalmette, La.
A Fairfax County, Va. service station accused of price gouging after Hurricane Katrina has agreed to set aside $3,000 for reimbursing customers and to donate $1,000 to the American Red Cross, Virginia's attorney general said Thursday. The Associated Press reports that Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell said the station more than doubled its prices after a state of emergency was declared on Sept. 2, 2005. The price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas soared as high as $5.90 that afternoon from $2.80 on Aug. 31.
A former FEMA worker is among seven more Louisiana residents facing federal charges for alleged disaster-aid fraud. A grand jury on Thursday indicted Keosha N. Martin, 24, a former application assistant who helped disaster victims apply for benefits from FEMA, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reports. The indictment alleges that Martin twice filed for benefits for herself and once for another unnamed Baton Rouge resident — even though neither had any storm damage from hurricanes Katrina or Rita. The indictments boost the number of people charged with post-hurricane fraud in Baton Rouge’s federal court to 42; at least 225 people have been arrested nationwide, Baton Rouge U.S. Attorney David Dugas said.
March 2, 2006
With thousands of cars and trucks damaged by Hurricane Katrina entering the marketplace, Congress should create a federal database to track such vehicles to prevent them from being sold to unsuspecting consumers, industry officials said Wednesday. The Associated Press reports that auto dealers and consumer groups said varying car title laws across the country have allowed some unscrupulous dealers and wholesalers to sell flood-damaged vehicles that have corroded wiring as well as defective brakes and air bags. Katrina damaged nearly 600,000 vehicles, the groups estimated, and thousands have been refurbished and sold to consumers in recent months.
February 27, 2006
Hurricane Katrina recovery brought more to the Gulf Coast than volunteers wanting to help storm victims. Law enforcement, bankers and storm victims, themselves, are seeing and sometimes feeling, the sting of a number of scams perpetrated, particularly against senior citizens, The Mississippi Press reports. While scams have been around a long time, the more creative ones surfaced along with the storm and talk of billions of recovery dollars.
A group of St. Bernard Parish, La., residents living on board a cruise ship under federal contract filed a lawsuit Friday seeking to stall their scheduled Wednesday eviction from the Scotia Prince, which has provided shelter for as many as 800 residents since it docked in the city of Violet shortly after Hurricane Katrina. The Times-Picayune reports that attorney Michael Ginart is seeking a temporary restraining order on behalf of 23 named plaintiffs who rely on the Scotia Prince for food and shelter and have not received other housing alternatives. Although the suit names only the Scotia Prince, it could potentially affect a similar March 1 eviction for people living on two other cruise ships in New Orleans, if successful.
February 24, 2006
The New Orleans court system may be forced to start releasing an estimated 4,000 prisoners — from drug suspects to murder suspects — if money isn't found to run the local public defender's office, a state judge warned Thursday. The Associated Press reports that since Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city Aug. 29, the courts have faced numerous problems, including forced relocation from the damaged courthouse, the loss of lawyers and support personnel and flooded evidence rooms.
February 23, 2006
Two New Orleans lawmakers do not have the right to obtain FEMA’s list of addresses for residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina, a state district court judge ruled Wednesday. The Times-Picayune reports that Judge William Morvant said that because the list is not a public record, the state does not have an obligation to hand over the information. Sen. Cleo Fields, D-Baton Rouge, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of state Reps. Charmaine Marchand and Cedric Richmond, both Democrats who represent New Orleans, said he expects to take the issue to the 1st Circuit Court of Appeal. The lawmakers say that the list is necessary so candidates for public office can send campaign material to registered voters.
February 22, 2006
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have disputed claims by ICE officials who said a lack of housing, fuel, food and medicine caused a weeklong delay in sending them to Hurricane Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, insisting that sufficient supplies were in place to accommodate 260 agents. The Washington Times reports that last week, ICE agents and supervisors said 300 agents trained in disaster response in field offices nationwide were waiting to be sent to New Orleans for security and rescue efforts, but were grounded by officials from the Homeland Security Department. Instead, they said, they were not deployed until days after Katrina plowed through the Gulf Coast, killing more than 1,300 people and causing massive damage.
February 21, 2006
More than 200 New Orleans officers have been under investigation by the Police Department for leaving their posts during the hurricane crisis. USA TODAY reports that since the fall, the officers have been appearing, one at a time, in often emotional hearings in which many of them have pleaded for their jobs before a review panel at the department's temporary headquarters in a hotel on Bourbon Street.
February 17, 2006
Almost six months after Hurricane Katrina, a mammoth red barge, an enduring symbol of the storm, still sits in the middle of what's left of the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. USA TODAY reports that the wayward vessel got there after tearing loose from its moorings and riding a torrent of floodwater into the neighborhood, coming to rest on top of houses, fences and the nose of a yellow school bus. It has been at the heart of lawsuits and investigations.
February 15, 2006
Emergency rations paid for by taxpayers and distributed to Hurricane Katrina victims and military personnel to sustain them in their hour of need are being sold on eBay, according to a Government Accountability Office report. It found that government-issued Meals Ready-to-Eat are being auctioned off for profit, and that at least some of the MREs were diverted from hurricane-relief efforts. ABC News found 83 military ration items on sale on eBay when searching for "Ready-to-Eat Meals" — almost all of them government rations and at least 14 of them from sellers claiming to be Katrina victims.
A Florida man was ordered to pay $10,000 and was banned from using any Katrina-related Web sites in connection with an investigation into unlawful solicitations said to be for the benefit hurricane victims. WKMG-TV in Orlando reports that Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist announced the successful conclusion of a civil lawsuit filed against Robert Moneyhan, who created katrinahelp.com, katrinadonations.com, katrinarelief.com, katrinarelieffund.com and katrinacleanup.com as the storm was poised to hit the Gulf Coast. Crist sued Moneyhan in September, alleging that he failed to register prior to soliciting donations and that the Web sites misrepresented that "100 percent of all donations (would be) used for relief" of storm victims.
February 14, 2006
A coalition of Florida farmworkers has sued the Federal Emergency Management Agency, alleging the government refused to help undocumented workers displaced by hurricanes with housing because of their immigration status. The Associated Press reports that many of them who were denied federal help after their homes were destroyed were forced to live in cars and other dangerous situations, while trailers intended for emergency housing went unused, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
February 13, 2006
About 150 criminal defendants have been charged by federal prosecutors since Katrina struck on Aug. 29, a USA TODAY review of court and Justice Department records shows. A Government Accountability Office review set for release today concluded that FEMA's disaster aid program is riddled with fraud, a finding that suggests prosecutors could eventually file thousands of additional cases.
February 9, 2006
Two veteran New Orleans criminal court judges have launched investigations of the besieged city's crumbling criminal justice system — probes that could lead to major changes in how poor defendants are represented, the Los Angeles Times reports. That system, on the verge of collapse for years, has been further imperiled by Hurricane Katrina's consequences. In the public defender's office, so few lawyers are available for more than 4,000 cases that defense for the indigent is almost nonexistent. And the office has no investigators.
February 7, 2006
Just as ubiquitous as the debris mounds and ruined cars littering Katrina-ravaged New Orleans are the looting stories: homeowners hit two or three times, businesses ransacked, construction workers sneaking off with people's valuables. Yet the problem, while acknowledged by police, is not reflected in official crime statistics compiled by the New Orleans Police Department, The Times-Picayune reports. Five months after the storm, police are still recording more than half of the city's looting complaints under a special code, 21K, developed shortly after the hurricane, internal police statistics show. The K stands for Katrina, and the 21 signifies "lost or stolen," used mostly in cases in which criminal activity is not clear-cut. These "lost or stolen" cases do not show up in publicly released crime reports.
February 1, 2006
A Florida man accused of collecting almost $40,000 in donations by falsely claiming he was flying Hurricane Katrina relief flights has pleaded guilty to fraud. The Associated Press reports that Gary S. Kraser, 51, created a Web site on which he told of evacuating people needing immediate medical attention. He provided vivid details, such as witnessing the electrocutions of dogs by downed power lines and saving the life of a 7-month-old baby who needed transplant surgery. He said he even "tipped wings" with Air Force One during one flight.
January 31, 2006
Thousands of vehicles that sat in the murky waters left by hurricanes Katrina and Rita are starting to show up on the used-car market. National Public Radio reports that most states require that flooded cars be labeled as such on the title. But scam artists have found loopholes in the system. They re-register cars in states with looser title laws -- sometimes two or three states -- until the warning that the car was flooded is gone. This fraudulent practice is known as "title washing."
A day before Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries fired off an urgent request for 300 rubber rafts to rescue people from what was expected to be high water in New Orleans. Marked "Red-High" priority, the plea went to the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters in Denton, Texas, where a team of disaster experts considered it, The Times-Picayune reports. As Katrina lashed southeast Louisiana and ruptured New Orleans' levees Aug. 29, FEMA gave its answer: "Request denied." The episode, which came to light Monday at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is just the latest in a growing collection of planning miscues that, despite years of warnings, left the region woefully unprepared for the storm.
January 30, 2006
Citing a wave of violence rooted in turf battles back in New Orleans, Houston police on Friday identified 11 Hurricane Katrina evacuees as suspects in a string of homicides, robberies and kidnappings since November. The Houston Chronicle reports that authorities attribute the violence to turf battles between residents of different public housing complexes that began in New Orleans and spilled into the Houston area after the Aug. 29 storm displaced hundreds of thousands of residents.
Hundreds of federal search-and-rescue workers and large numbers of boats, aircraft and bulldozers were offered to FEMA in the hours immediately after Hurricane Katrina hit, but the aid proposals were either ignored or not effectively used, newly released documents show. The Interior Department, which made the offers, also proposed dispatching as many as 400 of its law enforcement officers to provide security in Gulf Coast cities ravaged by flooding and looting. But nearly a month would pass before the Federal Emergency Management Agency put the officers to work, according to an Interior document obtained by The Washington Post.
January 24, 2006
The FBI has uncovered fraud by public officials in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and has created a task force to investigate corruption as federal money pours into the Gulf Coast region, Mississippi's top agent told the Associated Press on Monday. Federal money has been pumped at an unprecedented rate into the Gulf States since Katrina struck on Aug. 29, and Louisiana and Mississippi are set to receive billions in aid.
January 20, 2006
Law enforcement officials are hoping to develop a plan that could dramatically reshape law enforcement in the New Orleans area by merging functions of the city's police department with those of sheriff's departments in four parishes hit hard by Hurricane Katrina, USA TODAY reports. The plan — which would require approval from local governments and millions of dollars in federal aid — would consolidate the agencies' programs for analyzing evidence and training recruits. It also would create a regional crime lab and an emergency communications system that would link much of the area.
January 19, 2006
More than 3,200 people are officially still unaccounted for nearly five months after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, and the state medical examiner wants the search to resume for those missing from the most devastated neighborhoods. The Associated Press reports that a total of nearly 11,500 people were reported missing to the Find Family National Call Center, a center run by federal and state workers. The reports included people from throughout the Gulf Coast area, but most were from Louisiana. As of today, all but about 3,200 had been located, the agency said.
Hurricane Katrina evacuees living in Houston are suspected of killing eight fellow Louisianans there between September and December, according to revised police numbers released Wednesday. Investigators now say evacuees were the victims or suspects in 23 homicides last year after their arrival, Police Chief Harold Hurtt said, more than doubling his department's earlier estimates on how many killings have been linked to evacuees, the Houston Chronicle reports. In a third of those cases, both suspect and victim had been displaced by the Aug. 29 storm.
January 18, 2006
Hurricane Katrina left New Orleans in shambles. But the storm also gave the business community something that didn't seem possible just six months ago: a clear shot at a new beginning. USA TODAY reports that business and community leaders plan to use the reconstruction effort to address a host of systemic problems, including racism, inferior schools, high crime and unemployment. They also hope to tackle a problem as old as New Orleans itself: corruption. It's a major deterrent to outside investors, who have long been repulsed by the city's grease-the-palms style.
A federal judge approved a settlement on Tuesday in a lawsuit over the first demolitions of New Orleans homes ruined by Hurricane Katrina, after city officials agreed to give homeowners advance notice, according to The New York Times. The settlement means that the city can begin demolishing homes, an emotional and symbolic act here, within a few weeks.
January 13, 2006
A 35-year-old Louisiana woman could get up to 10 years in prison for buying a stolen car and truck from a stranger to get out of the New Orleans area after Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press reports that Karen Marie Calloway testified that she didn't think the vehicles were stolen, despite what Terrebonne Parish Assistant District Attorney Barry Vice called the "ridiculously low price" of $2,200 cash for both a 2004 Toyota Solara convertible and a 2003 Toyota Tundra pickup, and the lack of paperwork.
January 12, 2006
Now-familiar scenes—of families marooned on rooftops and in attics by the flood waters in New Orleans; of a bus bearing elderly evacuees engulfed in flames on a Texas highway; of impatient Miami residents queued around the Orange Bowl for water and ice—shattered Americans’ confidence in the capacity of government at any level to protect them from catastrophe. So states are moving to shore up their defenses, planning for disasters they now recognize can be far worse than previously imagined, Stateline.org reports.
January 9, 2006
A federal task force has arrested 143 persons nationwide for bribery, extortion and fraudulent claims on hurricane disaster funding, and at least 1,000 investigations are ongoing in New Orleans, The Washington Times reports. Most of the cases involve false claims to aid earmarked for victims of hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but several extortion cases already are in the court system.
January 4, 2006
It's much too soon after Hurricane Katrina's decimation of New Orleans to talk about a possible merger of the city's civil and criminal court systems, the chief judge of Civil District Court said Tuesday. The Times-Picayune reports that while some members of Mayor Ray Nagin's Bring New Orleans Back Commission last week endorsed combining the courts to streamline government in the hurricane-downsized city, Judge Ethel Simms Julien calls the discussion premature.
December 22, 2005
More than one medical professional is under scrutiny as a possible person of interest as Louisiana's attorney general investigates whether hospital workers resorted to euthanasia in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, a source familiar with the investigation has told CNN. CNN first reported in October that staff members at Memorial Medical Center had discussions about euthanizing patients after the hurricane flooded the city on Aug. 29, cutting off power and stranding hundreds of thousands of residents. Now, for the first time, Attorney General Charles Foti has told CNN that allegations of possible euthanasia at the hospital are "credible and worth investigating."
An upward swing in the Houston’s homicide rate — 324 homicides reported to date this year compared with 263 in the same period in 2004 in the Texas city — isn't the only thing concerning police, the Houston Chronicle reports. Officers say that they are seeing more stranger-on-stranger crime, a resurgence of gang activity and more violence around apartment complexes, especially those swelled with Katrina evacuees. Officials acknowledged that at least eight homicides involved hurricane evacuees, but Police Chief Harold Hurtt said Wednesday that it was incorrect to assume that "the reason that crime is up in the last quarter of this year is evacuees from Louisiana. A lot of this is contributed to homegrown citizens."
December 21, 2005
Saying their clients were duped by unscrupulous employers, an immigrant advocacy group filed a federal lawsuit yesterday against a Howard County, Md., contracting company, saying it refused to pay 35 Maryland laborers hired for cleanup projects along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The Baltimore Sun reports that the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, contends that the Mount Airy firm MFC General Contractors Inc. refused to pay its workers the $10 an hour it promised them and offered no overtime pay. The owners of the company denied the accusation yesterday, saying delays in worker payments resulted from problems with the firm that hired them to do the work.
December 20, 2005
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has announced the arrest of 13 Louisiana fugitives who went into hiding during the evacuation from Hurricane Katrina. All 11 men and two women were wanted in connection with some type of violent crime, including three on charges of homicide, the Houston Chronicle reports. The fugitives were captured in late November and December, using information provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Governor's Office of Homeland Security. The fugitives who were arrested applied for FEMA aid, Abbott said, adding that it was difficult to get a list of people who applied for financial assistance.
December 15, 2005
A Georgia man was arrested Tuesday and charged with wire fraud and false use of Social Security numbers to obtain federal disaster relief money, reports The (Baton Rouge) Advocate. U.S. Attorney David Dugas said Wednesday that Drewey Pierre Whittaker, 44, formerly of Villa Rica, Ga., was arrested in Albany, Ga. According to Dugas, the complaint alleges that 50 disaster unemployment debit cards were mailed to a post office box in Villa Rica, an Atlanta suburb. The debit cards had been issued by the Louisiana Department of Labor as Disaster Unemployment Assistance, a program funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
December 13, 2005
A federal judge in New Orleans yesterday ordered the Federal Emergency Management Agency to continue paying the hotel bills of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees until as late as Feb. 7, criticizing the government for inaction 15 weeks after the storm, The Washington Post reports. U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ordered the disaster response agency to pay for storm victims' rooms for at least two weeks once a decision is made on granting them rental housing assistance or until Feb. 7, whichever comes first.
The reduced population in New Orleans after Katrina could ease the process of revamping the state's juvenile justice system to focus more on rehabilitation, state officials said Monday. The Times-Picayune reports that at the Bridge City Center for Youth, the state Office of Youth Development has been able to use the months after the storm — when the facility has had a smaller population — to remodel more dormitories to meet new standards, said the agency’s head.
December 12, 2005
The chaos that followed Hurricane Katrina, vividly recounted in thousands of pages of documents recently released by Louisiana officials, sounded eerily familiar to members of the Sept. 11 commission, who delivered their final report this week. The Washington Post reports that emergency workers were isolated and unable to call for help for themselves or others; radios and cell phones were inoperable; and government was unable to respond to a catastrophic event.
A contractor hired to clean up and dispose of debris from Hurricane Katrina at a Hattiesburg, Miss. mall has been charged with stealing merchandise from a lingerie store and taking a Make-A-Wish Foundation playhouse. The Associated Press reports that Mark Saddis, of East Coast Construction Co., was charged with two counts of felony theft in Knoxville, Tenn., after stolen Victoria's Secret merchandise from Turtle Creek Mall was recovered there, Knoxville police spokesman Darrell DeBusk said.
December 9, 2005
The city of New Orleans has fired 60 police officers and suspended more than 25 others who didn't show up for duty in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city's police chief said Thursday as officials worked their way through a long list of disciplinary hearings. The 228 officers now involved in disciplinary hearings left New Orleans without permission in the days after the hurricane hit, the chief told the Associated Press in an interview.
December 8, 2005
A brawl that began in the Westbury High School cafeteria Wednesday and spilled outdoors capped weeks of growing tension between local Houston students and transplanted Katrina evacuees, resulting in the arrest of 27 students. The Houston Chronicle reports that the fight was one of about a dozen such on-campus clashes that have roiled Houston and surrounding areas since thousands of students from New Orleans began attending local schools in September.
Louis Armstrong International in New Orleans has had 17 gun seizures in the last year, 10 of which occurred since October, says Mike Robinson, the airport's security director. The Associated Press reports that officials say the sudden jump post-Katrina puts the New Orleans airport way above the national average. Most of the incidents involved local residents.
November 21, 2005
Nearly three months after Katrina struck Louisiana, about 2,500 people arrested on minor charges before the hurricane hit are still in custody, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. A number of them never have been charged, many are being held beyond the time they were due to be released, and hundreds never have had court hearings. Their plight is one of many troubling issues facing the Louisiana court system. Among its problems: since the storm, funding for public defenders has been further imperiled.
2,500 Arrested Before Katrina Are Still in Limbo
November 8, 2005
Public safety experts say that the massive problems suffered by New Orleans's 911 system during Katrina carry national implications for future disasters, according to the Washington Post. No national standards exist for 911 systems and most cities have not upgraded their emergency systems to include backup measures to automatically reroute calls, they say.
Thousands of Katrina 911 Calls Went Astray
October 26, 2005
Under pressure from gun-rights groups, FEMA is lifting its ban on firearms at temporary housing parks built to house Hurricane Katrina evacuees, the Associated Press reports. The National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment Foundation have complained that the ban violated constitutional gun ownership rights.
Gun Possession Now OK at FEMA Housing
September 23, 2005
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., introduced legislation yesterday that would limit the liability of contractors working on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, The Washington Post reports.
Bill Would Limit Firms' Liability (fifth item)
September 20, 2005
The Washington Post reports that contractors working on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts for the federal government want Congress to limit their liability from lawsuits. And they are drafting legislation to seek just that protection, industry officials said yesterday