On September 1, 2005, three days after Katrina made landfall, a shotgun shell whizzed over the head of a young Black man holding his daughter in his arms. He was among hundreds of victims that day, eager to escape the flood by crossing the Crescent City Connection (CCC), a double span bridge over the Mississippi River built in the 1950s that connects the majority Black city of New Orleans to the majority white suburb of Gretna in Jefferson Parish. But deputies from three law enforcement agencies had barricaded the bridge to prevent these flood survivors from evacuating. Claiming the crowd had become “unruly,” a deputy fired his shotgun in what he later characterized as “pretty much an act of self-defense.”