NOPD detective under investigation for writing message in murder victim's blood 
 
 Mike Perlstein / Eyewitness News 
 
 Email: mperlstein@wwltv.com | Twitter: @mikeperlstein 
 
 NEW ORLEANS -- New Orleans homicide detective Charles Hoffacker has channeled many of his gritty street experiences as a cop into a second career as a cutting edge artist. 
 
 He once used bullet casings to craft a grim portrait of convicted killer and accused drug kingpin Telly Hankton. An earlier painting depicted an assault rifle draped in Mardi Gras beads. 
 
 But Hoffacker is now the subject of an internal investigation in what might be a case of taking his artistic sensibilities too far. 
 
 Hoffacker is the subject of a formal complaint that he wrote a message in the blood of a murder victim at a crime scene last week. 
 
 The blood had apparently coagulated on the street where the victim was found, multiple sources said. 
 
 The New Orleans Police Department confirmed that Hoffacker was decommissioned last Wednesday over the incident and placed on desk duty. The reassignment means Hoffacker can’t wear a uniform or carry a gun and is not allowed to work on the street. 
 
 Hoffacker's attorney, Eric Hessler of the Police Association of New Orleans, said the case has been blown out of proportion. 
 
 He said the crime scene was never compromised, and the victim had long been removed from the scene when the alleged tampering took place. He conceded that Hoffacker may have used poor judgment, but said the detective never intended any harm and did not violate any departmental rules. 
 
 Stress may have been a contributing factor, Hessler said. 
 
 He said the complaint came after Hoffacker had worked two double shifts during the bloody Memorial Day weekend that saw four people killed and another 15 wounded in an extreme spike of violence, even by New Orleans standards. 
 
 “This was an isolated incident that happened during a very, very difficult time for New Orleans and for this officer also,” Hessler said. “And I’m hoping that the NOPD sees it that way and treats it that way.” 
 
 Andy Antippas, owner of Barrister’s Gallery on St. Claude Avenue, has exhibited Hoffacker’s work for nearly 10 years. He said whatever happened at the crime scene was likely done out of Hoffacker’s anger and frustration over the city’s violence. 
 
 “If there were 50 more like him, our police force would be a lot stronger,” he said. “Whatever it is he’s been accused of, someone has misconstrued something.” 
 
 Antippas said Hoffacker is known for pouring the dark emotions of his police work into his artwork. 
 
 “On at least two occasions, he described crime scenes to me with such pathos, such personal anguish, that I remember distinctly on one of those times tears coming out of his eyes,” he said. 
 
 In a statement by Hoffacker on his website under his gallery name, Von Hoffacker, he explained how his experiences as a detective to influence his artistic vision. 
 
 “I use art to bring the violence I experience on a daily basis to the forefront of the more cultivated art world,” he wrote. “Art to ignite reflection and artistic creation to spur a dialogue of resolution is the underlying purpose of pursuing this career. I find solace in the tradition of painting to both memorialize and reason my subject matter.” 
 
 Hoffacker’s work has been shown locally at Barrister’s, Space Gallery, Second Story Gallery and the Contemporary Arts Center. Originally from New Mexico, Hoffacker received formal art training at Delgado Community College, joining the NOPD at a time when he was gaining local attention as a painter. 
 
 He has been the subject of several media stories focusing on his non-traditional mix of professions, including a featured piece on National Public Radio. 
 
 Antippas said Hoffacker approaches both jobs with the same sense of moral purpose. He recalled one example of Hoffacker’s art in which he made a charcoal portrait of a murder victim whose killing was unsolved. 
 
 Hoffacker donated the piece to the family of the victim to be sold at auction to raise money for the family and increase the Crimestoppers reward. 
 
 According to departmental rules, the NOPD’s Public Integrity Bureau has 14 days to determine whether to classify the investigation as criminal or administrative. ||||| A New Orleans police detective is being investigated after he allegedly wrote a message in a murder victim's blood. 
 
 New Orleans police confirmed that homicide detective Charles Hoffacker was placed on desk duty last Wednesday after he allegedly doodled with a victim's blood once it had coagulated on the street at a crime scene. 
 
 A complaint states that he tampered with the scene, although, according to WWL-TV, his attorney said the case has been blown out of proportion: 
 
 He said the crime scene was never compromised, and the victim had long been removed from the scene when the alleged tampering took place. He conceded that Hoffacker may have used poor judgment, but said the detective never intended any harm and did not violate any departmental rules. 
 
 Hoffacker is also an artist. According to his website, he "[uses] art to bring the violence I experience on a daily basis to the forefront of the more cultivated art world." 
 
 But as WWL-TV reports, his past projects didn't allegedly involve potential evidence from a crime scene. 
 
 The attorney said his client was stressed after working two double shifts over Memorial Day weekend. Hoffacker was the lead detective on at least one murder case that weekend, in which a 15-year-old died in a shooting at a graduation party. It is not clear if that was the scene where he allegedly wrote the message in blood. 
 
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 Contact The Author ||||| NEW ORLEANS — Citing “grotesque prosecutorial misconduct” on the part of federal lawyers here and in Washington, a judge on Tuesday threw out the 2011 convictions of five former police officers who had been found guilty in a momentous civil rights case of killing two citizens and engaging in an extensive cover-up in the days after Hurricane Katrina. 
 
 In a heated 129-page decision, Judge Kurt D. Englehardt of Federal District Court here declared that federal prosecutors had created a “prejudicial, poisonous atmosphere” in making anonymous online comments before and during the trial at nola.com, the Web site of The Times-Picayune, and ordered a new trial for all five officers. 
 
 The decision represented the collapse, for now, of a case that was seen as symbolizing both the profound breakdown of law and order after the hurricane and a deep rot within the city’s police department that dated back well before the storm. 
 
 While a scandal over anonymous online commenting had already cut short the federal careers of two local prosecutors and the United States attorney himself, Tuesday’s decision identified another, previously unknown commenter: a veteran lawyer in the Department of Justice in Washington who had a role in preparing the case for trial. 
 
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 “This case started as one featuring allegations of brazen abuse of authority, violation of the law and corruption of the criminal justice system,” the decision read. “Unfortunately though the focus has shifted from the accused to the accusers, it has continued to be about those very issues.” 
 
 The vacating of the 2011 convictions, which were hailed by the city’s officials and by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., was another setback for a wide-ranging federal campaign to reform the New Orleans Police Department and hold some of its officers accountable for past abuse. A consent decree mandating full-scale departmental changes, announced with fanfare by the city and the Justice Department last summer, is now being appealed by city officials, who said they were unaware of the costs of a separate decree being negotiated that concerns the troubled city jail. 
 
 The most notorious of several criminal investigations concerned the shootings on the Danziger Bridge on Sept 4, 2005, when the streets were still flooded and citizens were scavenging for basic supplies. Responding to a distress call, officers raced to the bridge and, according to testimony of witnesses, opened fire without warning, leaving four badly injured and James Brisette, 17, and Ronald Madison, a mentally disabled 40-year-old, dead. Trial witnesses described the cover-up that followed, beginning at the scene with the arrest of Ronald’s brother, Lance Madison. 
 
 The case wound its way through the system, first falling apart in state court over grand jury improprieties before being taken over by federal prosecutors in 2008. Four officers — Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Anthony Villavaso and Robert Faulcon — were eventually convicted in connection to the shooting itself. Another, former Detective Arthur Kaufman, was convicted for his part in the cover-up. 
 
 Judge Englehardt, who declared a mistrial last year in the case of another officer involved in the Danziger case, had long been critical of the prosecution. At the defendants’ sentencing last year, the judge, an appointee of President George W. Bush, criticized federal prosecutors for the plea deals that had been offered to cooperating witnesses, among other things. 
 
 Some of these criticisms were raised in Tuesday’s decision, but the main objections concerned the behavior of prosecutors online. 
 
 That someone in the United States attorney’s office had been anonymously commenting on nola.com was first revealed in the spring of 2012 by lawyers representing the target of a high-profile corruption investigation. The revelations were the talk of New Orleans as lawyers identified a longtime assistant United States attorney, Sal Perricone, as a prolific and rather acerbic commenter under several handles. The targets of his commentary were varied and included the police department, which he called “corrupt,” “ineffectual” and “a joke.” 
 
 Several months later, Jan Mann, the office’s second-highest-ranking prosecutor, was also revealed to have been commenting anonymously. In the wake of this disclosure, Jim Letten, at the time the longest-serving United States attorney in the country, stepped down. 
 
 Neither Mr. Perricone nor Ms. Mann was a part of the federal trial prosecution team. But the defendants, citing Mr. Perricone’s extensive online comments about the case, had already requested a new trial. 
 
 After Mr. Letten’s resignation, the Justice Department announced that John A. Horn, a federal prosecutor from Georgia, would be investigating the office for misconduct relating to the commenting scandal. The judge describes his dissatisfaction with Mr. Horn’s findings, four times sending questions back that he wanted Mr. Horn to answer. It was over the course of this back and forth that Mr. Horn reported that Karla Dobinski, who since 1985 has been a trial lawyer in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, had commented several times on nola.com under the name “Dipsos.” 
 
 Ms. Dobinski had an important role leading up to trial, as the lawyer in charge of the so-called “taint team,” which among other things ensured that testimony given by police officers under immunity was not later used against them (the failure to do so is what fatally compromised the case in state court). 
 
 Ms. Dobinski was in Washington during the trial and did not appear to have made the sort of provocative online remarks made by Mr. Perricone or Ms. Mann. But in the last week of trial, she urged along certain nola.com commenters who were following the trial and were strongly in favor of the prosecution. Judge Englehardt suggested that the discovery of Ms. Dobinski’s commentary was “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” 
 
 In a statement, a Justice Department spokeswoman expressed disappointment with the ruling, saying that the department was reviewing the decision and considering the options. 
 
 “It’s almost unbelievable,” said Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, adding that the risks of social media are a frequent discussion topic among lawyers. “This is the most dramatic danger sign that we’ve had come along.” 
 
 In a statement, Dr. Romell Madison, the brother of Ronald and Lance, urged the Justice Department to appeal. 
 
 “This decision reopens this terrible wound not only for our family but our entire community,” his statement read. It concluded, “Our fight for justice continues.”
– Crime-solver by day, offbeat artist by night? That's New Orleans homicide detective Charles Hoffacker, who last week scrawled a message at a murder scene—in the victim's blood, WWLTV reports. The department has decommissioned him (no uni, no gun, no street jobs) and launched an internal investigation, but Hoffacker's attorney is taking a stand. He says Hoffacker wrote the message long after the victim was removed, and was likely stressed out over a weekend of Memorial Day violence that saw four killed and 15 injured (Hoffacker was lead detective at the fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl, the Times-Picayune reports, but no word on whether that's the crime scene in question, notes Huffington Post). Andy Antippas, owner of Barrister's Gallery, defended the blood-scrawl as Hoffacker's way of coping: "On at least two occasions, he described crime scenes to me with such pathos, such personal anguish, that I remember distinctly on one of those times tears coming out of his eyes." The art Hoffacker has shown at Barrister's was political satire, though Hoffacker says he has no political bent and just makes art to decompress, the Times-Picayune reports. In a profession that tends to leave people depressed, he says, art "has helped me be more healthy."