the public interest. additional funding is provided by the park foundation. committed to raising public awareness. and by the frontline journalism fund. with grants from the hagler family, and scott nathan and laura debonis. >> tonight on frontline, an exclusive investigation. in the chaotic days after hurricane katrina... >> people were shot and killed by the new orleans police department. >> ...eleven civilians were shot by new orleans police officers... >> looting and other lawlessness will not be tolerated. >> ...as rumors circulated about a declaration of martial law. >> i've already called for martial law in the city of new orleans. >> i heard rumors that martial law was in place, and then i heard rumors that no, it was not. >> i never declared martial law. >> did the police believe they could suspend their own rules? >> does he expect us to, rank and file, go through the streets, you know, shooting looters? >> new evidence shows that an order was given authorizing officers to shoot looters. >> one of the most troubled police departments in the history of north america. the nopd reverts back to what the existing culture has always been. >> that's the guy? >> that's the one that beat me. >> tonight, the story of one of those killings... >> what happened here wound up setting this chain of events in motion that has turned the new orleans police department upside down. >> ...and questions about a cover-up. >> bodies just don't burn up like that. >> the way it was destroyed was telling a story. this was a premeditated homicide. >> propublica reporter a.c. thompson, the times- picayune, and frontline investigate: "law and disorder in new orleans." >> narrator: these are the pictures we all remember. the storm of a century. the flooding that submerged a city. the dispossessed. and the chaos. >> hey! stop! drop here! >> is it running right now? >> yeah, it's running. >> narrator: but there were some images that few people saw. this video was taken by this man, istvan balogh, a former law enforcement officer who had come from out of state to assist after the storm. >> i mean, can you believe this? this is, uh, the ninth of september. >> we were on a routine foot patrol. i'm looking down towards the riverbank. just to see if i see anything unusual. and i observed a white vehicle. we found this completely burnt out vehicle. i yelled up to my partner, i go, "you won't believe what's in here. there's a dead body. there's a... looks like a femur right here. i observed the skull. and from here you can... there's a skull. i observed what looked like a bullet wound. looks like it was shot from the side. there's no question in my mind. this is a pre-meditated homicide. absolutely amazing. this body is disintegrated. i mean, that was a hot fire. this is the whole body right here. the magnitude of the way it was destroyed. it was telling a story-- i don't want no one ever to find out what i did. >> narrator: it was two years after balogh's discovery when a reporter first came across the story of the burnt remains. propublica's a.c. thompson, then a freelance crime reporter, had come to new orleans to investigate suspicious deaths in the wake of katrina. with the support of the nation institute, he'd sued to see the public records. >> i'd gotten a hold of over 807 autopsies of people who had died in the days after the storm. most katrina victims had drowned, but one autopsy report described a badly burned body. and there was something else that i found odd: there was no cause of death. the line where homicide or accident could have been written was blank.vnoo[mpóm the other information the autopsy told me was that the remains belonged to a 31 year- old-man named henry glover. i found out that glover had lived in the algiers neighborhood of new orleans on the west bank of the through katrina along with his mother, brother and sister. the last time his sister saw henry was september 2, four days after the storm. >> september 2, we was at home. my brother and another friend said that they was going out to get some help and, you know, get some water and some food and stuff. and... and he never made it back. >> henry had come here to this strip mall with his friend, bernard. his brother, edward, was nearby at his own home that morning. >> i was home feeding my family and i can hear somebody hollering from a distance. my nickname is dirty red. "dirty, dirty. somebody shot your brother." i said, "hold up. hold up. you sure it's henry?" he said, "yeah." so he run... i run out the house to where he was at. >> both edward and patrice ran to find henry here about 50 yards down the street from the strip mall; he was bleeding from the chest. >> i saw my brother laying down there and he was on his stomach. i said, "brother, hold on. i'll get you some help." >> that's when edward flagged down a passing car. the stranger slowed, then stopped. his name is will tanner. >> henry glover was in the middle of the street and his brother edward was standing over him and he's talking about how he needed medical attention for his brother. so i got out the car, touched his neck and see he still had a pulse. >> tanner reaching down feeling saying, "he have a pulse, he have a pulse." so i grabbed him and we fell back into the car like this. >> my mission is to get him to the hospital or somebody who can help him. >> but will tanner thought the hospital was too far. he didn't think glover would make it. instead, tanner drove a mile to habans elementary school. >> i knew at habans school, they have medical attention. police was camped out there. >> in the days after katrina, the nopd swat team had turned this school into an armed encampment. >> can i have everybody's attention? i'm going to go ahead and do the mission briefing for the night. >> these scenes were filmed for a frontline program called "the storm." >> for tonight, our mission is to proactively patrol the fourth district. >> it's here that members of this unit would gather for their daily orders, often assigned to go on looter patrol. >> our purpose for this patrol tonight is going to be to deter crime and looting patrol, all right. anything out of the ordinary, go ahead and challenge it. >> when we got there, i thought that they was going to help us. but the first thing they did was put us in handcuffs. and i'm like, "why? we're coming for help." so i made the statement because you all... i said, "you all not helping my brother." whoever killed him, i'm gonna kill them," out of anger, you know, for my brother. i'm seeing my brother in that, you know, that way. so that's what i said and that's when the beating came. man, they beat me, they beat me. i ain't never been beat like that in my life. when he first hit me, i faked like i was knocked out. so he said, "get up. get up, you piece of shit." so he grabbed me right here and he... his fingers almost touched. i liked to blacked out and he let me go just in time. >> they hit me. cked me in the ribs twice. hit me with an m-16 rifle upside my face. and henry glover is still in the car bleeding. and no one didn't check on him at all. that was the cruelest thing a person can do to a man-- let him bleed to death in the car like that. and show no, you know, no reaction to try to help him. >> they let him sit in that car too long. the last time i saw my brother is when they took me out of that car and put them handcuffs behind me. that's the last time i saw him. >> edward says he and will tanner were still in handcuffs when one of the police officers drove off in tanner's car. with henry glover still in the backseat. it's been five years since henry glover died. edward is still haunted by the experience. >> i tried to figure it out. i used to come out here and just sit and try to redo the whole thing, and i just can't... i just can't figure it out. i really can't. >> i wasn't gonna do this, but since we... that's the guy? >> that's the one that beat me. >> you sure? >> i'm positive. he beat me good. i mean, i grew up in the neighborhood project, i mean, fighting three, four times a day. but i never got beat how this man beat me with my hands behind my back, kicking me in my face, spitting in my face whenever he feab6sei >> it's been five years. you're sure this is the dude? >> i'm positive. i'll put my life on the line that's the one beat me. i would never forget his face. >> narrator: the officer edward king fingered was lieutenant dwayne scheuermann, then second in command of the nopd swat team.i within the ranks of the police department, scheuermann's status 3 cop; courageous and fearless.m that was certainly the reputation he had earned in the first days after katri lt. scheuermann was interviewed by frontline at habans school.# >> when the storm hit early monday morning, we actually watched it from the arena. we're watching the pieces of the dome's roof come off. and we started getting reports that there were already both police officers and citizens in trouble as far as high water is concerned. >> narrator: at that time, scheuermann was considered a hero for his part in rescuing stranded flood victims. >> myself and my brother took our personal fishing boats. there was people in their attics. they had punched the windows out of the attic. and they were screaming to us to come get them. >> he was relentless. look at his face, his eyes, you see the sheer determination but you can also see the fatigue. police officers in the first week, they were basically working 24/7. just being in a constant sense of survival. it took a toll, it took a toll. it was rough. >> narrator: hurricane katrina had hit the new orleans police department hard. >> katrina hit on august 29, sometime mid-day on august 30, we lost complete communications. >> narrator: warren riley was second in command of the nopd at the time of the storm. >> we were unprepared. the city was covered by water. we had no power, no lights. our radio system went down, our backup system failed. and we lost complete command and control of the police department. >> we were dealing with a police force that was completely inundated with lack of resources. and it was clear that we were having some civil societal breakdown. >> tension mixed with temptation on tuesday as those trapped in a city of rising water took survival into their own hands. >> narrator: quickly news reports were saturated with a lasting image of katrina-- the looter. >> looting in new orleans. shots have been fired. >> downtown new orleans became a looter's free-for-all. >> they represent a frightening breakdown of law and order. >> narrator: but early media reports were exaggerated. >> there was chaos on canal street for a period of time. that was a fact. but rumors were all over the place. >> with gangs of men armed with stolen weapons roaming the streets and firing at police. there may be shoot-outs soon enough. >> narrator: stories now known to be untrue were told by the highest-ranking nopd officers. >> the sniper started shooting at my swat team off of fire trucks. then they started shooting at me in the helicopter. >> narrator: and then repeated across the news. >> how do you explain snipers firing on a medevac helicopters trying to get the sick to safety? >> rumors were running amok. and i shouldn't have, basically, given it any credibility by repeating what was told to me. if i had to do it all over again, i wouldn't. >> we had a very tenuous situation all throughout the city. and from that came rumors and innuendo that unfortunately some officials repeated as fact. >> you getting ready to see something that i'm not sure you're ready to see. there are people standing out there. have been in that frickin' superdome for five days. watching dead bodies; watching hooligans killing people; raping people. >> there's not one iota of evidence to show that anyone was killed or raped in the dome. but you have to realize we were hearing these rumors and we were believing these things as well, initially. >> narrator: on august 30, deputy chief riley met with mayor nagin and passed on another unconfirmed report. >> i heard an officer request on the radio, he said, "i need more ammo. we need more ammo." imagine. that's what you hear in the movies, that's what you see in a war movie. you don't hear that in urban policing where you're out of ammo. >> that's when the mayor says let's stop search and rescue and bring our force back to controlling the streets. let's stop the looting; let's stop the lawlessness and let's put our police officers on the streets. riley says, "we will do that." and the mayor said, "let's stop this crap now." >> i remember, we were down by harrah's casino. and deputy chief riley walked up in a pair of blue jeans, his uniform shirt and a ball cap, and really just starting giving a pep speech, you know, kind of a morale-booster, saying that we were not going to allow the looters to take the city, we were going to more or less protect the borders of it and march through downtown and take the city back. >> did you ever say, "it's time, we got to take our city back?" >> i may have said we need to take control of the city, that may have happened. >> and do you think you ever, did you ever say anything like "looters, it's time to, you know, it's time to do things like shoot to kill?" >> no... >> or... >> you're mixing me up with someone else. i didn't say anything like that. >> who said that? >> i didn't say that. i heard rumors that someone else said that. but i certainly didn't say that, no. >> it was a very broad order. what exactly did he mean, you know? does he expect us to rank and file, go through the streets, you know, shooting looters or how do you take back a city? >> just sending out a general order, general statement about take back the city with no specific guidelines is an invitation to disaster. >> narrator: sam walker is a professor of criminal justice and an expert on the legal standards for when police can use their guns. >> the standards on deadly force are fairly clear. an officer can use deadly force where there is a threat to someone's life, or that this person is armed and fleeing and likely to commit another armed offense. that's a very narrow range. >> narrator: but in post-katrina new orleans, nothing was clear. could stealing food, water or a tv now mean a death sentence? >> a shoot to kill order, to shoot looters, would violate the long-established standards on use of deadly force. >> narrator: orders to the nopd rank and file became even more uncertain when mayor nagin called for martial law. it was the day after the storm and he had just been told by his chief of police that a police officer had been shot in the head. this story, we now know, was true. >> our police, at that point, were completely focused on search and rescue. and here they were being shot at. and it made the mayor furious. and that's when he said, we need to declare martial law. >> the city they nicknamed the big easy, still a disaster zone, under martial law. >> tonight, in a rare move. practically unheard of in the united states-- martial law declared. >> would you request martial law? >> i've already called for martial law in the city of new orleans. >> narrator: in fact, martial law was never declared in new orleans. >> narrator: ray nagin declined to be interviewed for this program, but his deputy chief of police, warren riley, said there was confusion. >> i heard rumors that martial law was in place, and then i heard rumors that, no, it was not given. >> i never declared martial law. i know that it's not legal to do that. but what we were doing was strengthening the appearance of a lawful environment. that's when i called in members of the guard who knew policing, and i asked them to come in and to show force. we needed to make a very dramatic statement, to calm the media down and to calm the citizenry down. there are hundreds of law enforcement officers being deployed into new orleans today to restore order. looting and other lawlessness will not be tolerated. i wanted it to be strong and i wanted it to be clear. these troops know how to shoot and kill and they are more than willing to do so, if necessary, and i expect they will. >> narrator: the mixture of rumors and official orders had an impact at police stations around the city. five current and former ranking officers have told frontline, propublica, and the times- picayune, on condition of anonymity, that they believed they had been given authority to shoot looters. they said they did not pass the order on. however at one station, a police officer's home videotape captured first district captain james scott telling officers quote, "we have authority, by martial law, to shoot looters." captain scott initially told us he didn't recall the incident and declined to comment. scott has since hired an attorney who told frontline that the rest of the tape puts the statement in context, but he refused to show it to us. had the rules on the use of deadly force changed? other officers said orders spread from cop to cop. "do what you gotta do. anything goes. take the city back." >> as i was reporting on henry glover, i found evidence of other troubling incidents involving the police in the days after the storm. the first of them happened here on this overpass on september 1. just like the glover story, this one involved the swat team that was camped out at habans school. captain jeff winn and his lieutenant, dwayne scheuermann, were told that someone had hijacked a water truck. the story they heard was that thieves were robbing, raping and killing people. winn and scheuermann rolled out through the flooded streets. and near the superdome, they spotted three water trucks. they said a man near one of the trucks had a gun. both officers took aim. these pictures show dwayne scheuermann at the scene. ( gunshots ) they hit the man in the torso-- but he survived. his name was keenon mccann. and when the cops apprehended him there was no gun to be found. the police theorized he might have thrown it away-- off the overpass. keenon mccann was lucky that day. he survived getting shot. he's since died, but his brother and sister-in-law were with him on the bridge. they say he didn't have a gun. that he was stranded there with his family. what do you think happened? >> what i think happened, that i think they just came out there and got the wrong people, or the wrong person. mistakenly shot keenon for nothing. that's what happened. if he had a gun, why did they bring him in baton rouge to the hospital? brought him there, un-handcuffed, he stayed there for a minute, and then they cut him loose, and let him go free. the system don't work like that. >> narrator: the local prosecutor never brought any charges against keenon mccann. mccann was the first of at least 10 questionable shootings of civilians by police in the week after katrina. >> they beat me, they beat me. i ain't never got beat like that in my life. >> narrator: it was the very next day that edward and will tanner say they were beaten by police as henry glover bled in the back seat of tanner's car. >> and what was he wearing at the time? >> he had the tactical pants. >> like the dark army kind of uniform? >> the blue, like a bluish black. >> narrator: back across the river that night, there was another shooting-- this one at the new orleans convention center. danny brumfield was shot in the back by an nopd officer. the next day, a 41-year-old drifter named matthew mcdonald was killed by the police at this intersection near the french quarter-- also by a single gunshot to the back. and finally, there was the incident at danziger bridge, which has become the most well known of the shootings by police after katrina. at the time, the danziger incident seemed to be a victory for the police in their fight against lawlessness. it was september 4, when word went out over the radio that officers were under fire near the