A reporter was held at gunpoint by police after Katrina. Years later, he helped expose their misconduct

Three days after Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans, Gordon Russell was doing what journalists do in a disaster: walking the streets, taking notes, documenting what the public had a right to know.

Then, suddenly, he was thrown against a wall. Guns were drawn. Police were shouting.

“It was sort of frightening,” Russell recalled.

The city hall reporter for The Times-Picayune had been driving near Ernest N. Morial Convention Center with a staff photographer when they stumbled onto a scene that made them targets. The encounter would stay with Russell for years — and eventually lead him to investigate police misconduct in post-Katrina New Orleans.

Russell, who had been at The Times-Picayune 10 years, was among a small group of reporters who stayed in New Orleans to help cover the events that occurred during Hurricane Katrina. His wife and young daughter had gone to Memphis, and he focused on covering the storm. 

Knowing just how important his work was to the people in New Orleans and those scattered around the state and the country, he and his colleagues worked long hours and pushed themselves to write about every aspect of the storm to provide helpful information for readers.   

“We were all kind of exhausted,” Russell said. “It was a time when you felt that the public really needed information, so it seemed really important what we were doing.” Brian Thevenot, Russell’s colleague, felt the same way. “There was a sense of mission that we’ll never be able to duplicate,” he said.

Russell’s home downtown did not flood or suffer any major damage — even his landline stayed working — so he allowed colleagues and other journalists to stay and work there.  

It was on Sept. 1, 2005, while riding in a car near the convention center, along Religious Street, that Russell and freelance photographer Marko Georgiev, encountered the chaotic scene of police, with their long guns drawn, and two men lying still on the ground. At first, the journalists noticed only one of the men, who appeared to be dead. Georgiev, then working for The New York Times, took a few photos and as they began to leave, police came after them.

“I saw them drawing and raising their guns at us and was afraid they would shoot at us,” Georgiev recalled.

The officers pulled the men from the car, threw them against a wall and snatched one of Georgiev’s cameras from around his neck. Russell overheard one of the officers say they had been involved in a shootout. 

“They kind of pushed us around a bit and tried to take my notebook and the photographer’s memory card,” Russell said. 

Russell told police they worked for the press, and ultimately neither were harmed and they got their equipment back. But Russell never forgot the encounter. After some time, Russell helped form an investigative team and began to look into police abuses after Hurricane Katrina. 

Years after the altercation, Russell finally learned what happened to the men on the ground that day. “It turned out [the police officers] hadn’t killed anyone, but they beat two guys very badly,” he said.

Russell said this story, among others investigating police corruption in the days after the hurricane, led the FBI to open an investigation into the New Orleans Police Department. Several police officers were later indicted and convicted and the department was monitored by the FBI under a consent decree. 

Russell said journalists bonded while covering the hurricane, which helped keep him sane. 

When residents finally started returning to New Orleans, Russell said journalists formed a clean-up organization, called Muckrakers, and scattered the city to assist in any way they could. The group spent most of their time helping people remove their ruined belongings from their flooded homes. 

“It was hard watching people go through that,” said Russell. “I felt emotionally exhausted, but I was always cognizant of the fact that a lot of people had it worse than I did.” 

Russell said he sometimes wondered about the city’s future. “I was thinking about whether there will be a time when life will return to a state of normalcy,” he said. “I knew that would happen, but did not know how long it would take.” 

Hurricane Katrina seemed to remind readers of the importance of journalism, Russell said.

“For a while, I think that the city had a love affair with the newspaper,” he said. “It’s a reminder that people really cared about the paper during news times and that what we do matters.” 

Russell now works as deputy editor of the Boston Globe’s spotlight team, the award-winning special reporting unit for investigative and accountability journalism.