By Allan Lengel

Nearly five years after Katrina, New Orleans,  the city of jazz, Cajun cooking and legendary partying, still bears the scars. So does the tarnished police department.

The latest reminder of the troubles the police department still faces came Friday  when a federal grand jury indicted three current cops and two former ones in connection with the police shooting of a resident, who was fatally shot days after Hurricane Katrina, the Justice Department announced.

“Behavior such as described in the indictment has no place in a free society, let alone law enforcement,” David Welker, head of the FBI in New Orleans, said in a statement.

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A 49-year-old Texas inmate pleaded guilty Friday to hiring a hitman —  who ended up being an undercover ATF agent —  to kill a state judge.

Jeffrey Dwayne Harrison pleaded guilty in Lubbock, Tex., to attempted murder-for-hire of Judge Stephen Ellis, 35th Judicial District Court Judge of Brown County, Tex., the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Harrison was incarcerated on drug charges in the Brown County Jail in Texas at the time of the latest crime, authorities said.

According to plea bargaining papers, law enforcement in March learned that  Harrison was looking to hire someone to kill the judge, who was handing his drug case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

A confidential informant  introduced Harrison to an undercover ATF agent to carry out the murder. Authorities said Harrison first contacted the undercover agent by phone and said:

“I don’t want to say too much, I was just letting you know the court, it’s 35th Judicial [District], Steve Ellis is my judge, he said you’d get some paperwork rolling for me, so I’m going to shoot you some money so that we can get that rolling right.”