NEXT ON THE WHITE POWER CHOPPING BLOCK: ROLAND BOURGEOIS, JR.

Next month, we will see the 5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a time when we thought all of us would come together in the spirit of community and helping out our neighbor, just like we always have in other disasters. Instead we had to deal with incompentence and then the hatemongering of the right, who has for some morbid reason, continue this really effed up routine of demonizing victims of natural disasters when they are a little off white (see Haiti Earthquake). There was something else that was going on at the time, but it had been regulated to the “urban legend” category – until now. For years, black residents of New Orleans have been trying to get the word out that there were armed whites taking advantage of the disaster by going around and picking off African Americans. On the other side, there were indeed white bragging about doing so. Interestingly enough, there wasn’t much along the lines of evidence pointing to this happening. But now a five-count indictment has been handed down to Roland Bourgeois, Jr. a white man who has boasted about hunting down and shooting black people, even keeping the bloodied baseball cap of one of them. The three he shot at were not looting, were not attacking Bourgeois, were not doing anything except trying to get the hell out of town. Now this is just one arrest, but considering stories like this have repeatedly come up – not to mention the recent conviction of four officers for shooting at Katrina Victims, killing one – these stories need to be investigated. The Bourgeois story is just coming down the pike, but considering this is a UK article, we are concerned that our local media isn’t going to pick up on it. We will though, and we’ll stay on it.

Daily Mail

A man who allegedly fired a shotgun at three black people trying to escape the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has been charged with committing a hate crime.

Roland Bourgeois Jr, a 47-year-old white man, was charged in a five-count indictment with firing a shotgun at the men in New Orleans’ historic Algiers Point neighbourhood.

The trio were on the south side of the Mississippi River when they tried to leave the centre of the city after the August 2005 hurricane.

Bourgeois and others discussed shooting black people and defending the neighbourhood from ‘outsiders’ after the storm, the indictment said.

He allegedly bragged that he ‘got’ one after the shooting, then retrieved a bloody baseball cap belonging to one of the victims.

‘When (he) was advised that the man he had shot was still alive, Bourgeois referred to the injured man using a racial epithet and threatened he would kill him,’ the indictment said.

Bourgeois also warned a black resident of Algiers Point that ‘anything coming up this street darker than a brown paper bag is getting shot’.

Bourgeois, now a resident of Mississippi, faces a possible life sentence if convicted of charges that include committing a hate crime with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.
Hurricane Katrina

The case against Bourgeois is one of several post-Katrina investigations opened by the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

On Tuesday, six current and former New Orleans police officers were indicted on federal civil rights charges stemming from deadly shootings on a bridge.

The shootings left two men dead and four wounded. In one instance, a mentally disabled man was shot in the back and stamped on before he died.

Sergeants Robert Gisevius and Kenneth Bowen, officer Anthony Villavaso and former officer Robert Faulcon were charged with deprivation of rights under colour of law and use of a weapon during the commission of a crime.

The indictment claims Faulcon shot 40-year-old Ronald Madison, who had severe mental disabilities, in the back as he ran away on the west side of the bridge.

All six officers are charged with participating in a subsequent cover-up.