An ex- New Orleans police officer pleaded guilty Wednesday to knowingly falsifying facts and covering up a fatal shooting involving police in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Retired Lt. Michael Lohman, 42, pleaded culpable in U.S. District Court. His plea is part of a federal investigation into numerous police shootings in 2005 in the hectic and desperate days following Katrina, according to reports. Michael Lohman could spend up to 5 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for May 26.

In total, 7 officers were charged with murder or attempted murder in the shootings, which occurred September 4, 2005, almost 1 week after the deadly storm, ravaged the city and other parts of the South.

The charges were later on dropped, reports stated.

As per the reports, the shooting occurred as local police and other law enforcement officers accosted 6 people crossing the Danziger Bridge. Officers opened fire on the group and in the process killed 40-year-old Ronald Madison, a mentally challenged individual, also 19-year-old James Brissette. But, reported witness accounts said the officers fired at unarmed persons.

Federal documents stated that Michael Lohman arrived on the scene after the shooting and encouraged officers to falsify reports to point out the individuals opened fire on officers first. He reportedly also gave them consent to plant a firearm at the scene of the crime.

As said by the federal authorities, more pleas and convictions could follow with further investigations.

A 61-year-old Buffalo woman was sentenced to 3 years’ probation also ordered to make restitution for making a fake claim for damages suffered in Hurricane Katrina.

Aaron Mango, the Assistant U.S. Attorney said Gayle Porter was convicted of defrauding the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) by claiming more than $10,000 in damages from the storm and flooding, when she in fact lived in Buffalo at the time Hurricane Katrina hit the New Orleans area.

She has to repay $10,391 in restitution to FEMA.

The influx of evacuees from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina had slight impact on crime rates in the cities that took them in, said by the researchers.

5 criminologists who examined crime rates in the 3 cities found a spike in homicide also robbery in Houston immediately after Hurricane Katrina and in homicide in Phoenix, the Houston Chronicle reports. However they found no significant increase in other crimes, and murder and robbery rates soon declined yet again.

Houston grew by 7 % as roughly 240,000 people from New Orleans evacuated there. About 30,000 people came to San Antonio and 6,000 to Phoenix.

Mr. Sean Varano, a criminologist at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, said he and the other researchers wanted to check on anecdotal information on huge increases in crime.

“One of our takeaway messages is if the evacuees were legally responsible for this crime wave, we would have expected to see a much broader range of crime to increase besides murder and robbery,” Sean Varano said. “This is not quite the effect the local people claimed on the ground there.”

The man who managed Harrison County’s emergency operations for Katrina is at present in Haiti, where he says the great effort is “heartbreaking.”

In a telephone interview with The Sun-Herald, Mr. Joe Spraggins says earthquake survivors are making a tent out of just about anything, or sleeping on the streets.

Joe Spraggins is now working for DRC Haiti, a private company vying for recovery contracts and providing assistance. He’s been there since January 31.

Recalling Hurricane Katrina, he said Haitians would consider the federal trailers used after Katrina to be mansions. Joe Spraggins said cleanup has been difficult because the majority of the buildings were concrete and sat on hillsides.

Joe Spraggins said the country faces years of rebuilding.

A central Pennsylvania animal shelter is looking for new homes for above a dozen pets that had previously been displaced nearly 5 years ago by Hurricane Katrina.

The dogs and cats were initially part of a pack of 100 pet refugees rescued by the lady in Texas in the hurricane’s aftermath.

In accordance with the Center County PAWS shelter, the unidentified woman had found new homes for some pets before she moved to Pennsylvania in 2006 and took 75 pets along with her.

The lady found new owners for more pets, but a recent crisis enforced her to give up caring for the residual animals.

The shelter said previous month it initially took in almost 2 dozen Katrina pet refugees. Its Web site Thursday showed 11 cats and 3 dogs pending adoption.

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit over a police blockade that kept back a few Hurricane Katrina victims from crossing a bridge out of New Orleans in the storm’s aftermath.

U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Vial Lemmon on Monday ruled that concluding the Crescent City Connection to pedestrians after the Aug. 2005 hurricane did not amount to an “unreasonable restraint of liberty.”

Mary Ann Vial Lemmon had ruled in 2007 that authorities didn’t violate Tracy and Dorothy Dickerson’s constitutional right to travel by means of stopping them from crossing the Mississippi River Bridge to escape the aftermath of the hurricane Katrina. The residual issues included whether police used excessive force and whether the Dickersons’ freedom-of-assembly and the same protection rights were violated.

ACKSON — A ex- Federal Emergency Management Agency worker and her cousin have pleaded culpable to orchestrating one of the biggest Hurricane Katrina scams to become public since the 2005 storm.

Ex- FEMA employees Lashonda Booker, 35, along with her cousin, Peggy Hilton, 36, were charged January 8 with conspiracy to commit mail fraud in a scheme to filch $721,000 that was meant for storm victims.

U.S. Attorney Mr. Donald Burkhalter has said it is the biggest robbery of Hurricane Katrina money by individuals to be made public until now.

According to Sheila Wilbanks, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s office, they pleaded culpable Wed. 2 in U.S. District Court in Gulfport.

Sentencing is set for April 29. The 2 women face up to 20 years in prison also a $250,000 fine.

Almost immediately after nearly every disaster the crimes start on: ruthless, selfish, indifferent to human being suffering, and generating far more suffer. The perpetrators go off without punishment and live to commit further crimes next to people. They care less for person life than for property. They take action without regard for consequences.

Of course, regarding those members of the mass media whose misrepresentation of what goes on in disaster repeatedly abets and justifies a second signal of disaster. I’m talking about the cure of wounded as criminals, together on the ground and in the news, and the endorsement of a shift of resources from saves to property patrol. They at a standstill have blood on their hands from Hurricane Katrina, and hey are staining themselves an extra in HaitHurri.

A robber makes off with rolls of cloth from an earthquake-broken store. People were then at a standstill trapped alive in the ruins.

When major natural disasters occur, hopeless humans make an ultimate effort.

It happened all over the Pacific after the Dec 2004 tsunami. So no one should be surprised at increasing scenes of chaos, looting and vigilantism in Kait Hurri. When aid is slow 2 arrive and more than a million people have no way 2 feed themselves. The population gain also been increased the rates from the first half of the decade.

Katrina a disturbance of the normal condition of the atmosphere ashore in August 2005, sending a person who is withdrawn from Louisiana and other parts around the Gulf coast to Texas.Nearly 250,000 displaced people and a year after the storm, Texas still had about 251,000 withdrawn from a place of danger, survey said.

BUFFALO, N.Y. - A Buffalo man has been sentenced to 15 months in jail for collecting nearly $16,700 in federal disaster aid after claiming to be a victim of Katrina.

Federal prosecutors say 64-year-old Sylvester Marshall claimed he was living in New Orleans when the hurricane struck in 2005 and had to move the Buffalo as his house was destroyed. The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Sylvester Marshall did live in New Orleans at one time but moved to Buffalo years before Hurricane Katrina.

Sylvester Marshall pleaded guilty in September to stealing of government funds.

In court Tuesday, Sylvester Marshall and his attorney said the majority of the money went to buy drugs to feed an addiction.

U.S. District Judge Mr. William Skretny ordered him to repay the entire amount.