NEW ORLEANS — Surrounded by victims’ families, City Council members and senior police leaders, Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans announced Monday that the city had reached $13.3 million in civil settlements pertaining to three major police brutality cases from the weeks before and after Hurricane Katrina. The settlements ended what the mother of one victim called an “awful, long and rough road,” beginning with acts of grim and pointless violence and continuing through an 11-year legal journey.

The three cases include some of the most brutal and high-profile instances of police violence in recent memory, predating the era of Ferguson, North Charleston and Black Lives Matter.

“There were angels among us that we never knew,” the mayor said of those days in 2005, when the city was flooded and nearly anarchic. “But evidently, there were demons as well.”

He offered an apology on behalf of the city and spoke of the strides the New Orleans Police Department had made under extensive federal oversight, in what he called “the most comprehensive consent decree in the history of the United States.” He also said that the 17 plaintiffs had offered forgiveness in return.