2 New Orleans Police Fired in Beating

The New Orleans Police Department said Wednesday that it had fired two officers involved in the beating of an unarmed man who said he had gone out for cigarettes when he was accosted on Bourbon Street.

Police Supt. Warren J. Riley announced that Robert Evangelist and Lance Schilling had been fired.

A third officer accused of grabbing a reporter during the incident, Stuart M. Smith, was suspended for 120 days, the department said.

The three officers have been charged with criminal battery. They have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled to appear in court in January.

The department declined Wednesday to discuss its decision in detail.

The officers’ attorney, Frank DeSalvo, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

He previously has said that the officers had been turned into “political whipping boys.”

The incident happened Oct. 8, when Robert Davis, 64, a retired schoolteacher who was displaced by Hurricane Katrina and now is living in Atlanta, returned to New Orleans to check on his property.

Davis was trying to buy cigarettes in the French Quarter when the officers assaulted him, he said.

An Associated Press videotape shows officers striking Davis and then dragging him to the ground.

DeSalvo has accused Davis of instigating the event by being belligerent and falling into a police horse.

Davis has been charged with public intimidation, public intoxication, resisting arrest and battery on a police officer. He has pleaded not guilty.

Davis’ lawyer, Joseph Bruno, cast the department’s decision to fire the two officers as vital in convincing the nation that New Orleans is a different and chastened city after Katrina.

Bruno said that in the past, the incident would have been swept under the rug, and that the beating had led to a fear that New Orleans could be deemed unworthy of federal commitment to reconstruction.

“We know that there are folks out there who would use any excuse not to provide necessary funding to people who have lost so much in our community,” Bruno said. “It’s all about perception. We understand the import of this whole thing, and we hope the rest of the country gets the message: New Orleans is not going to do things the way we used to do it.”

Bruno said he informed Davis about the decision Wednesday afternoon.

Davis declined to comment.

“We feel no joy in the knowledge that these two men are fired,” Bruno said. “By the same token, my client is on record that these two men should have never been permitted to serve as police officers in the first place.”

Davis has said he has not had a drink in 25 years. Police did not administer a sobriety test at the scene or at the hospital where Davis was treated for a fractured cheekbone, a broken nose and cuts.

Police officials have suggested that the stress shouldered by many officers after the hurricane might have contributed to the incident. As much as three-quarters of the force was left homeless.

Four months after Katrina, the 1,500-member department remains a topic of considerable discussion in New Orleans.

Riley announced this month that 60 officers had been fired and 25 suspended because they did not report for duty after the storm.

Disciplinary proceedings are continuing against at least 200 officers who face similar charges.

This week, the New Orleans City Council voted, 4 to 3, to repeal a controversial ordinance that had required officers to live within city limits to be hired or promoted. Like many issues in New Orleans, the debate settled along racial lines, with many black residents supporting the residency requirement, saying it increased the likelihood that officers would identify with the people they were protecting and supervising. Critics called the requirement an impediment to recruiting.