From [HERE] A New Orleans policeman was charged Thursday with manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a 20-year-old unarmed Black man at the home of his mother, where officers executing a search warrant had broken in to look for drugs. Officer Joshua Colclough, who was indicted Thursday with killing Wendell Allen on March 7, was suspended without pay while the Public Integrity Bureau considers whether he should remain on the force, Police Superintendent Ronal W. Serpas said.

After the grand jury indicted Colclough, a judge issued an arrest warrant and set bond at $300,000, said Assistant District Attorney Chris Bowman. "Twelve citizens of Orleans Parish ... said this police officer — another in a long line of many — broke the law by using excessive force and taking a young man's life," said Lionel Lon Burns, attorney for the Allen family.

He said prosecutors filed a sentence enhancement request. They said that because the crime was committed with a gun, Colclough should be sentenced to at least 20 years in prison if he is convicted. Manslaughter carries up to 40 years in prison.Serpas said the police investigation was "fair, thorough and transparent."

"Once we had all the facts available to us, we turned them over to the District Attorney's Office," Serpas said.

Defense attorney Pat Fanning did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Burns said the Allen family had expected Colclough to sign a plea agreement to negligent homicide on Wednesday, but he changed his mind at the last minute. The proposed plea bargain would have set the maximum sentence at five years in prison, Burns said.

The Times-Picayune reported that Colclough, 28, has been with the department for nearly five years.

Allen was one of eight people, five of them children, in the house when police showed up with a search warrant. Serpas said at the time that the officers, wearing jackets identifying them as police, broke into the house after repeatedly announcing their presence outside.

"They were looking for somebody allegedly selling marijuana, who had been arrested hours earlier," Burns said. He said police booked two people on misdemeanor marijuana charges.

Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who hired Serpas as chief soon after taking office in 2010, inherited a police department with a history of scandal and corruption going back decades. He asked the U.S. Justice Department to help clean up the department, and in July he and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced an agreement designed to do so. The 124-page agreement spells out a series of strict requirements for overhauling the police department's policies and procedures for use of force, training, interrogations, searches and arrests, recruitment and supervision.