The New York Times attempts to draw a picture of a Police Department in shambles because of Hurricane Katrina and the "lack of Government response is compelling, yet reading through the article, this police department had problems long before Katrina blew ashore
"A Baton Rouge police officer said he had a friend on the New Orleans force who told him he threw his badge out a car window in disgust just after fleeing the city into neighboring Jefferson Parish as the hurricane approached. The Baton Rouge officer would not give his name, citing a department policy banning comments to the news media.
The officer said he had also heard of an incident in which two men in a New Orleans police cruiser were stopped in Baton Rouge on suspicion of driving a stolen squad car. The men were, in fact, New Orleans officers who had ditched their uniforms and were trying to reach a town in north Louisiana, the officer said.
"They were doing everything to get out of New Orleans," he said. "They didn't have the resources to do the job, or a plan, so they left."
The stress of being a police officer or law enforcement is immense. I know, I've been there. It's stressful enough on a normal day, much more so when under the conditions after Katrina.
But here you have officers fleeing BEFORE the storm arrives because they felt there wasn't a plan adequate to face what was coming, that's a signal of trouble, and according to the NY Times article, the moral problems were long standing:
"Some patrol officers said morale had been low on the force even before the hurricane. One patrolman said the complaints included understaffing and a lack of equipment.
"We have to use our own shotguns," said the patrolman, who did not want to be identified by name. "This isn't theirs; this is my personal gun."
All this is a perscription for disaster when the "heat is turned up". Effective leadership doesn't happen in crunch, it had better been their all along. When moral is low before a disaster, it's going to hit critical mass when the big one comes.
Just another indication that "all is not as it would seem" in the Big Easy before Katrina came to town.
More and more as the days and months unfold I predict we are going to see a pattern of ineptness that was and is the leadership of the City of New Orleans. The picture that will be developing will one of a city government in chaos LONG before Katrina arrived with incompetence running rampant.
The picture ofthose buses which have been all over the internet but not yet in the MSM are a testimony to a city administration that completely failed in their duties, from the top down. Everytime the MSM shows you the pictures of the dead, the refugees in the Dome, crying out for food and water and help - remember those buses didn't move and there isn't a reason why they couldn't.
The Mayor, who doesn't hesitate to criticize the Federal Government, apparently was very, if not criminally negligent in his duties. Apparently so much so that not even his own Police Department had faith in his leadership.
I wonder how long the MSM is going to ignore it's responsibility to report the truth about what happened, or rather didn't happen with the City of New Orleans?
More at Michelle Malkin on the NG reponse to the Police Department problems.
Filed under Katrina disaster relief new orleans emergency response
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