Hurricane Katrina: An American Crime Told Through Five Films
Black New Orleanians were branded “refugees,” their hunger criminalized as “looting,” and they were deliberately abandoned by their own government. Hurricane Katrina was not nature’s work but a sanctioned American crime whose effects are still felt two decades later.
Kimberly Rivers Roberts and Scott Roberts, creators of the documentary ‘Trouble the Water,’ in front of their destroyed home in the Lower Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. Kimberly holds the only surviving photo of her late mother, recovered intact from the wreckage. (Image courtesy of Zeitgeist Films)
Storms are natural. What happened to New Orleans in 2005 was not. As we mark the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the truth is unchanged: this was not a natural disaster, but the collapse of a man-made system that everyone in power knew would fail. The levees that encircled the city were designed poorly, despite decades of having the funding, data, and time to make them fail-safe. After Hurricane Betsy, when floodwalls gave way and Black families were left to drown and rebuild, Congress passed the Flood Control Act of 1965, authorizing the Army Corps of Engineers to build a new hurricane protection system for New Orleans. Promises were made that such a catastrophe would never happen again. But when Katrina struck four decades later, those promises proved to be lies.
Then President George W. Bush never even toured the devastated neighborhoods. He did a brief flyover of the city and met at the airport with Mayor Ray Nagin, Governor Kathleen Blanco, and FEMA Director Michael Brown. For the leader of the United States, it was a hollow performance and proof that he lacked the courage and integrity to face the people he failed.
The horrors imposed upon Black New Orleanians were not new. In 1927, during the Great Mississippi Flood, officials unnecessarily dynamited the levee at Caernarvon in a senseless notion that it would save the rest of the city, thereby sacrificing the St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes. That betrayal was never forgotten. So when Betsy’s waters tore through the Lower Ninth Ward, many residents were certain the levees had been purposely blown. Officials denied it, but the damage was the same: Black, immigrant, working-class neighborhoods were left underwater and lives were lost.
The protections that followed were inadequate. Floodwalls were built thin, sunk into unstable soil, and left unfinished. In 2004, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Louisiana officials even did a Hurricane Pam planning exercise, a disaster simulation in which a fictional, strong category three hurricane — with the qualities of a category four — hit the New Orleans area. The results were alarming: levees overtopped, New Orleans under water, and hundreds of thousands stranded and displaced. They knew precisely what was coming when Hurricane Katrina was headed toward their city, and still deliberately chose to leave certain areas and the people within them completely vulnerable.
When survivors sought atonement after Hurricane Katrina, they found the law itself was written to deny them. The courts upheld those protections, overturning rare findings of liability and declaring the government beyond reach — even after the Army Corps of Engineers admitted in 2006 that its levee system had catastrophically failed.
With no remedy delivered, memory itself becomes a form of justice.
Around the world, when governments commit crimes and hide behind immunity, citizens have convened people’s tribunals to gather evidence, hear testimony, and deliver a moral verdict. What follows is such a tribunal: a symbolic trial of the United States of America and the state of Louisiana for crimes committed during Hurricane Katrina. We do so using Louisiana’s own criminal code — applying the very laws meant to protect its people against both the state itself and the federal government. In reality, sovereign immunity shielded the U.S. from accountability. Here, that shield is stripped away. The following five films stand as evidence, revealing the scope of the crime — lives drowned in floodwater, critical aid withheld, children left in trauma, recovery funds denied, and policies that fundamentally altered New Orleans and the generations who called it home.
Here, we apply the very laws meant to hold the government accountable to show what charges could and should have been made. No official will face prison for these crimes. But in the conscience of history, and in the verdict of the people, the United States and Louisiana are both guilty. For those who want to understand Katrina beyond headlines or anniversaries, these five documentaries below stand as testimony and are well worth watching.
“What makes America great is our ability to reach out and help others in times of need. But that’s where the lesson is learned. It’s upon us, it’s upon us to wake up.”
— Malik Rahim, activist and community leader
COUNT I: NEGLIGENT HOMICIDE
FILM: When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006)
THE CHARGE:
The United States government and the state of Louisiana are charged under Louisiana law with negligent homicide (La. R.S. §14:32). For decades it knowingly allowed a fatally flawed levee system to stand, despite repeated warnings that it would fail in a major storm. When Katrina struck, that neglect killed scores of residents.
THE EVIDENCE:
Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts lays bare how death in New Orleans was engineered long before August 2005. After Hurricane Betsy in 1965, Congress ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to build stronger protection. Four decades later, the city was still ringed by incomplete, unstable “I-walls” sunk in weak soil. Hurricane Pam, a 2004 planning exercise, had already predicted the devastation: levee failures, mass flooding, thousands stranded.
On August 29, 2005, those warnings came true. The Lower Ninth Ward and other predominantly Black neighborhoods drowned beneath walls of water. Families climbed into attics and onto rooftops. Many of the elderly, disabled, and young never made it out.
As engineer and entrepreneur Calvin Mackie stated, “The Army Corps of Engineers had 40 years to build a protective system around the city of New Orleans … So you mean to tell me they’re going to repair in eight months what they couldn’t build in 40 years … to be up to a point where people should feel secure?”
Musician Terence Blanchard, walking his ruined neighborhood, put it more bluntly: “It pisses you off, ’cause it didn’t have to happen … You have to ask yourself why.”
These were not acts of God but foreseeable deaths, the result of government decisions to save money rather than save lives.
THE VERDICT:
Guilty.
COUNT II: MALFEASANCE IN OFFICE
FILM: Trouble the Water (2008)
THE CHARGE:
The United States government and the state of Louisiana are charged under Louisiana law with malfeasance in office (La. R.S. §14:134). Officials with a duty to protect citizens refused aid, turned families away from safe shelter, and abandoned the vulnerable to die without care.
THE EVIDENCE:
Trouble the Water follows Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott Roberts as they used a handheld camcorder to document their survival during Katrina. Like many residents of the Lower Ninth Ward, they could not afford to leave. When the Industrial Canal levee broke three blocks from their home, they were trapped.
Neighbors who called 911 were told bluntly that no one was coming: “So I’m gonna die? … Hello?” Operator: “Yeah.” That single word was the extent of the state’s response. With no evacuation plan, neighbors had no choice but to rescue themselves.
Scott later led families to the nearby Navy base that had empty rooms, stocked and secure. Instead of safety, they were met by armed soldiers who cocked their guns at the group and ordered them to leave. As Scott recalled, “These people wasn’t worrying about our safety. That’s why I keep saying the government let us down. If you can’t even go to a naval base that’s closed down … and get at least a decent night’s sleep to be able to move in the morning, what good does it really serve us?”
This abandonment was not limited to one neighborhood. Patients were left in hospitals. Prisoners were abandoned in locked cells. FEMA’s promised $2,000 relief checks were delayed or denied, leaving survivors without food or shelter. As Brian, another resident, said to troops who had been in Iraq, “It’s not our war. This is the war, right here.”
Through it all, Kimberly’s presence in the footage was striking. When the couple returned to their house, she pulled from the wreckage the only surviving photo of her mother, “the woman of my life.” In the days after, she and Scott went door to door, checking who had made it out, calling for others, and urging neighbors to stay together. Her handheld camcorder became both witness and shield. Where the state abandoned its duty, Kimberly and Scott embodied what survival truly required: love, care, and community.
Louisiana law defines malfeasance in office as the intentional failure to perform a legal duty. During Katrina, officials not only failed, but they actively blocked survival.
THE VERDICT:
Guilty.
COUNT III: CRUELTY TO JUVENILES
FILM: Katrina Babies (2022)
THE CHARGE:
The United States government and the state of Louisiana are charged under Louisiana law with cruelty to juveniles (La. R.S. §14:93). In abandoning New Orleans’s children during and after Katrina, it subjected them to neglect, displacement, and sustained trauma that endangered their health and development.
THE EVIDENCE:
Katrina Babies centers the children who lived through the storm and grew up in its shadow. Edward Buckley, Jr., who made this documentary and was thirteen years old during Katrina, recalled: “In America, especially during disaster, Black children are not even a thought. Hurricane Katrina was no different. After losing so much, why wouldn’t anyone ask if we were okay? Nobody ever asked the children how they were doing. So, I am.”
Children were scattered across states, uprooted from schools, and reduced to “refugees” in their own country. Many lived in FEMA trailers that contained formaldehyde that they were unaware of, causing illness.
Cierra Chenier described the rupture of identity: “Everything you consider as part of who you are was reduced to a trash bag … when you start to really see the loss of life, that’s on a completely different level. And when so much of your identity is where you’re from, specifically what neighborhood you’re from … what does that do to your identity?”
As Carolyn Waiters Carter, who worked for a local nonprofit that aided students, stated, “How do you make someone feel safe? To feel safe is fundamental. They’re in home environments where they don’t feel safe. They go to school and they don’t feel safe. What does that do to our children? It wreaks havoc on their mental health, their physical health, their well-being.”
Louisiana law defines cruelty to juveniles as negligent or intentional mistreatment of a child under 17. Katrina’s children were neglected in their most basic needs, and endangered in their futures. Two decades later, their testimony is proof of a generation forced to carry unhealed trauma.
THE VERDICT:
Guilty.
COUNT IV: OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
FILM: Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time (2025)
THE CHARGE:
The United States government and the state of Louisiana are charged under Louisiana law with obstruction of justice (La. R.S. §14:130.1). Officials misled the public, concealed the absence of an evacuation plan, and delayed aid — all acts that directly cost lives.
THE EVIDENCE:
Katrina: Race Against Time exposes how deception and delay compounded the catastrophe. By August 28, 2005, officials knew New Orleans faced a Category 5 storm. The Hurricane Pam exercise a year earlier had modeled this exact disaster: breached levees, mass displacement, thousands stranded. Yet leaders shelved the warnings, leaving the poor, elderly, and disabled without any evacuation plan.
Promised buses never came. FEMA sent only one staffer to New Orleans on the day of landfall. Rescue boats were held back for hours after the levees failed. At the Superdome and Convention Center, tens of thousands of people waited without basics like food, water, and medicine while officials reassured the public that help was on the way — concealing the fact that no such help had been mobilized.
The lies and delays bred chaos. General Russel Honoré, who led recovery efforts as commander of Joint Task Force Katrina, condemned FEMA Director Michael Brown’s description of “civil unrest” as “bullshit.” Praised for his decisive leadership, Honoré cut through the paralysis: he secured supplies, deployed troops, and began evacuations. To many on the ground, he was the first official who treated them as citizens in need, not criminals to be contained.
Meanwhile, false rumors of looting and violence stalled transportation for days, costing even more lives. Police in Gretna blocked evacuees from entering the city at gunpoint, while white vigilantes in Algiers murdered Black men with impunity — acts carried out under the cover of official silence and delay.
Louisiana law defines obstruction of justice as any act to impede the administration of justice. By lying, delaying, and allowing violence to flourish unchecked, officials ensured that thousands would suffer and die unseen.
THE VERDICT:
Guilty.
COUNT V: ABUSE OF OFFICE
FILM: Katrina: Come Hell and High Water (2025)
THE CHARGE:
The United States government and the state of Louisiana are charged under Louisiana law with abuse of office (La. R.S. §14:134.3). In the aftermath of Katrina, officials misused their authority to deny Black residents the resources owed to them, stripping communities of homes, schools, and stability.
THE EVIDENCE:
Katrina: Come Hell and High Water shows that abandonment did not end when the floodwaters receded — recovery itself became a weapon. Black families in the Lower Ninth Ward and beyond received smaller rebuilding grants than white homeowners. Public housing was demolished, and over 5,000 Black educators and staff were fired, gutting schools and leaving children with teachers who neither knew their culture nor their community. As Ivor van Heerden, former deputy director of the LSU Hurricane Center, observed: “We are literally dumbing down our students. And there’s a whole theory about the easiest way to control a population is to dumb them down.”
Fred Johnson, a Lower Ninth Ward resident and community activist, cut to the root: “Systemic racism drives it. Let’s be fair. Systemic racism is at the heart of every freaking thing we touch.” That racism was visible in who was displaced and who was rebuilt: one in four New Orleanians — overwhelmingly Black — were permanently pushed out of their neighborhoods.
Actor Wendell Pierce, whose parents lost the home he grew up in, testified to the deeper system at work: “The fact is there are people that benefit from keeping an underclass in this city … We are still a state of privatized prisons. Privatized prisons. Angola is a working plantation.”
The Lower Ninth Ward had once been one of the only places Black families could own homes. “When people said you shouldn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward, that was a place that people built a community and built a neighborhood, when they could not buy homes anywhere else,” said Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans.
Louisiana law defines abuse of office as misuse of authority to obtain or withhold something of value. By dismantling housing, gutting schools, and denying families the resources to return, officials violated that law. Discriminatory recovery programs withheld the very funds needed to rebuild lives, ensuring that what was lost would never be restored.
THE VERDICT:
Guilty.
THE RECKONING
This people’s tribunal delivers its judgment: Guilty on all counts.
The United States of America and the state of Louisiana abandoned their own citizens, and the weight of that crime remains twenty years later. Justice should have meant reparations, rebuilding, and accountability. But the sentence cannot fall only on governments. It falls on us everyday people too, as the crime of indifference is not limited to New Orleans in 2005. Katrina is a mirror, showing us what happens at home and abroad when we look away, and when we decide some lives matter less.
And yet the story of Katrina is not only one of loss. Survivors rebuilt their homes, moved wards, or established lives in new cities. They fed each other, cared for one another, and carried the heart of their beloved city forward with grit and joy. They did the work the government and the country at large refused to do. That is also the record of New Orleanians.
“We need to give a damn,” says Morial, in Katrina: Come Hell and High Water. “Even if it’s not in my backyard, even if the people impacted don’t look like me, even if the people impacted are not people that politically agree with me. We need to give a damn. We need to have compassion.”
Twenty years on, the risks of hurricanes, floods, and other catastrophic events — natural and man-made — have continued to increase. Climate change and failed policies affect us all. The truth is simple: indifference kills.
Katrina was not nature’s work. It was a sanctioned American crime. And yet the people of New Orleans carried forward what the waters could not drown — their love, their joy, their traditions, their history, and their community. That is what endures.