A Policemans view of the Big Easy

[RGRWJB]

From an out of state Policeman on the ground....

 

All fine in Baton Rouge so far. We have 50,000 refugees in a town of 300,000 so you can imagine the problems. So far the lid has been kept on and FEMA is starting to show a bigger presence. They are talking about moving the bulk of them to other cities. So stand by. You may be getting a chunk of the Big Easy coming to you.

 

I went down there yesterday on a SWAT operation to rescue specific individuals..... The physical damage to the city, other than flooding, is not catastrophic. The city looks the same in the daylight as it always did. The human situation on the other hand is insane. There is NO law and order anywhere in the city limits. The area of the French Quarter is a free fire zone as is the area around the Superdome. We were all over the city and we were the ONLY organized law enforcement on the street, period. There were 14 of us. Saw some dead bodies but not an overwhelming number. As of 3 p.m. yesterday there were only about 100 or so NOPD officers left on the job. The rest of the 1100 man department had quit and left the city with their families and I don't blame them. Most of them had been simply thrown onto the street the morning after the storm and had not see or spoken to their chain of command since. I mean NO contact. NOPD SWAT is about all that is left and we gave them ammunition. They looked like they had been through hell. We were out of the city by dark. One of the eeriest sights that I have ever seen was driving over the bridge and seeing a black void where the lights of N.O used to be.

 

We are going back down there in a day or so and set up a more permanent presence. This thing is going to start being fixed so the situation will start to improve over the next couple of weeks. There is going to have to be a complete federal take over and martial law declared over the whole area for an unspecified amount of time.

 

More to come

[Dr.Hess]

I really rather expected this outcome. I've been to NOLA. I used to live in Slidell, which I gather isn't there anymore. I interviewed at a neurosurgery program in NOLA at the charity hospital. They had a very large number of gunshot wounds to the head. Like every night. It was probably just barely below a free fire zone then. The out of control crime was one of the reasons I didn't particularly like the program. I mean, you still have to live there for six years. I have often wondered if I would have been better off ranking that NOLA program higher than Galveston, where I wound up, but right now I am glad I didn't.

 

I also strongly suspect that a lot of the people who did not evacuate chose so specifically so that they could loot in the aftermath.

 

Dr.Hess