A former police detective testified Monday that he participated in a plot to fabricate witnesses, falsify reports and plant a gun to make it seem police were justified in shooting unarmed residents on a New Orleans bridge after Hurricane Katrina.
Jeffrey Lehrmann, a government witness in the federal trial of five current or former officers, said he saw Sergeant Arthur 'Archie' Kaufman retrieve a gun from his home several weeks after the deadly shootings on the Danziger Bridge.
Kaufman later turned the gun in as evidence, claiming he found it under the bridge a day after the 2005 shootings that left two people dead and four others wounded.
Mr Lehrmann said Kaufman instructed him to fill out paperwork that claimed the gun belonged to Lance Madison, whose mentally disabled brother, Ronald, was shot and killed on the bridge.
Two Missouri sheriff's deputies were shot and killed and two more were injured after a suspect...
