NEW ORLEANS – A second former New Orleans police officer has been charged with helping conceal a conspiracy by police to cover up the shooting on the Danziger Bridge after Hurricane Katrina.
The shooting killed two people and wounded four others.
Jeffrey Lehrmann is the second former member of the NOPD to be charged in the federal probe. Last month, former Lt. Michael Lohman pleaded guilty to his role in the cover-up.
A bill of information unsealed today charges that Jeffrey Lehrmann “knew of a conspiracy among police officers to obstruct justice ... engage in misleading conduct ... concealed the conspiracy ... and participated in the creation of false reports..." Click to read the bill of information
Lehrmann is charged with misprison of a felony, meaning it alleges he knew about a crime and failed to report it.
“Here is a second shooting drop, so to speak, and another officer that has broken from the purported code of silence and is now corroborating the government’s theory that there was a conspiracy involving police officers in the shootings that occurred on the Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005,” said Rafael Goyeneche of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.
“I would expect that you would see the government looking to work around the edges on the cover-up angle in order to then focus on whether they will be able to establish if any officers intentionally violated the civil rights of any individual,” said former U.S. Attorney Harry Rosenberg.
Lehrmann was with the NOPD for less than a year, from March 2005 through September 2006.
