The 5th District police station that remains damaged and in disrepair more than two and a half years after Katrina is locked up with chains now.

But last Friday when officials from the Metro Crime Commission examined the files that Eyewitness News reporter Bigad Shaban discovered unsecured and available to anyone who happened to walk inside, Rafael Goyeneche and Tony Radosti raised serious concerns about a photograph they found.

It's a picture of six men in an apparent police lineup with one man circled and the phrases "place your finger here" and "he did it" written above.

“To have something like this in any police department, I think it’s embarrassing and potentially a civil rights violation,” said Goyeneche.

The picture is on a bulletin board in the damaged police station. There is no way to determine how long it has been there, who put it there or who wrote on it, but Goyeneche said the public is owed an explanation.

“This is an indication of a grander problem,” he said. “(It’s) a problem that requires an immediate and complete investigation.”

Attorney Mary Howell now says a federal investigation has been requested about the photo with a formal complaint filed.

Howell wouldn’t say who filed the complaint and she called the picture a sick joke that raises disturbing questions.

“Is there a possible obstruction of justice? Is there a possible civil rights violation? This is a serious matter,” she said. “Is this from a specific case? Was there a question raised about identification?

Retired Criminal Court Judge Calvin Johnson agrees that the picture's disturbing.

“It tells us that potentially at least, a problem exists,” he said. “That is just so foreign to what we want to accomplish in the justice system.”

Bob Young, a spokesman for the NOPD, says the photo could not possibly be an official document.

“If it would have been an official lineup, it would have been submitted to evidence,” he said. “It wouldn’t be on the bulletin board at the district station.”

Judge Johnson says that's true, but he contends that the picture could be identical to one that was submitted as evidence.

“The bottom line is we need to find out what actually happened, what actually occurred, if, in fact, something bad happened,” he said.

Even if it's just a joke, law professor Dane Ciolino calls the picture damaging because it plays into the very arguments defense attorneys have made for years -- that police are telling victims and witnesses whom to identify in criminal cases.

“The problems that this will cause, the fodder that this will give to defense lawyers in eyewitness ID cases is something that could potentially have serious consequences,” he said.

And, documents found unsecured in the district station last week are raising other questions.

Ciolino and Howell question why complaints against officers would be filed in a district station.

“It undermines the integrity of the investigation,” she said. “It undermines the representations to the community that there’s a safe place you can go where you will have an impartial investigation.”

The two attorneys say the disciplinary files should be secured away from district stations and away from headquarters - in the Public Integrity Bureau.

Otherwise, they say people filing complaints can't be assured of impartial treatment and the investigation could be compromised.

“Witnesses who may have given evidence in a public integrity investigation against those officers might be, once they’re known to the officers, might be subject to intimidation,” said Ciolino.

Young says the documents are secure in the locked station now and will soon be moved.

He says every piece of paperwork that comes out of the station will be examined.