Blue on Blue: Murder, Madness and Betrayal in the NOPD

Few would deny that in 1995 the New Orleans Police Department was in sad shape. The agency was losing about 100 officers per year  many of them fired or arrested  and hiring only half that many.

In 1994, two officers were arrested for murder. One for killing a man the officer suspected of breaking into his apartment; the other for ordering the execution of a woman who had filed a brutality complaint against him.

Then in December 1994, the FBI arrested 10 New Orleans cops on federal drug trafficking charges.

CBSs Mike Wallace branded New Orleans The No. 1 city in the nation for police brutality and corruption. Mayor Marc Morial told Time magazine, I inherited a police department that was a shambles.

By the start of 1995, things were bad, but they were about to get a lot worse.

Officer Antoinette Frank  the woman who would become the poster child for police misconduct and the living symbol of a department gone bad  had just met Rogers LaCaze.

Just past his 18th birthday, LaCaze already had a history of violence and drug peddling. His mother, Alice Chaney, kicked him out of the house when he was 17. "Rogers had become a dope dealer," she says.

At the end of 1994, LaCaze got shot. He told police that he and his friend, Nemiah Miller, were hanging out when another friend, a 19-year-old who went by the name "Freaky D," whipped out a gun and opened fire on them.

Alice Chaney has her own opinion for the reason behind the shooting. "It was behind a dope deal," Ms. Chaney says. "Rogers and Nemiah had just scored."

Miller died. LaCaze went to the hospital. One of the investigating officers was Antoinette Frank.