Tag: Warren Riley

Opening arguments begin today in what observers have called the most important trial New Orleans has seen in a generation. It is a shocking case of police brutality that has already redefined this city’s relationship to its police department and radically rewritten the official narrative of what happened in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina.

In the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina, an order circulated among New Orleans police authorizing officers to shoot looters. “We have authority by martial law to shoot looters,” Capt. James Scott told a few dozen officers. Warren Riley, then the department’s second-in-command, said to “take the city back and shoot looters.”