 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. 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. 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. 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. 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."
– 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."