[Cross-posted at MLW]
The Dallas Morning News somewhat scathingly, if partially correctly, wrote yesterday:
New Orleans teems with crime, and the NOPD can't keep order on a good day. Former commissioner Richard Pennington brought New Orleans' crime rate down from its peak during the mid-1990s. But since his departure, crime rates have soared, to 10 times the national average. The NOPD might have hundreds of decent officers, but it has a well-deserved institutional image as corrupt, brutal and incompetent.
Even in the worst of organizations, times, events, or eras there are individual heroes in our midst. This collection of press clippings is meant to highlight the bravery, sacrifice, and heartrending trials of those New Orleans' police officers who chose to stay behind as their city crumbled around them.
The Age [Melbourne, Australia]:
Australians Loot to Survive
"It's a battle zone. There's shooting, dead bodies in the street," he said, adding that he and his wife were forced to steal to survive. "We're [four Australian's trapped in NOLA] looters like everyone else," he said. Mrs Miller told Channel Seven News: "There's no power, there's no water, we've still got a portable loo we've got three dead bodies, five dead bodies down there ... disease.
"I'm not blaming the police because they are under so much pressure. I had an altercation with a police officer and he ended up just crying to me because he was so frustrated and he couldn't do any more. He wanted to help us but he didn't have any resources." Mr Miller described the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as "horrific".
He said police had broken into shops to feed survivors. "When we first arrived here the door at the mall was actually smashed by a police officer and he said, 'help yourself ... food and drink, take it, don't take anything else'," he said.
Houston Chronicle [TX]: Katrina's `Gift' Came in the Spirit of Hurricane Refugees
On Tuesday evening a friend of mine asked me to caravan to Beaumont to pick up some of her family members from New Orleans. They had fled the rapidly rising waters in the hard-hit Ninth Ward and other areas in New Orleans. In all, 35 people piled into a furniture moving van driven by my friend's brother-in-law. They made the trip to Beaumont in about 11 hours, driving on U.S. Highway 90 out of New Orleans because Interstate 10 was shut off.
Thirty-two people, mostly young children, rode in the back of the truck with the roll door lifted in order to get air in the stifling confines. All they had in the world were the clothes on their backs and a few possessions hastily thrown into plastic bags as the waters inundated their homes.
The spirit of New Orleans was embodied in these weary travelers, I thought. New Orleans is (shall I say was?) a city where people of all races, geographic and economic backgrounds could go and, at least for a few days, forget their troubles, forget their prejudices and just have fun.
The driver of the moving van told me the Louisiana State Police had stopped them in a town called Henderson. A passing motorist had reported to the state police seeing a group of people piled in the back of a moving van on Highway 90. Several of the children in the truck had waved at the cars as they passed by.
As fate (or the spirit of New Orleans) would have it, the Louisiana state troopers pulled the van over, but they didn't issue citations. They quickly realized that all the people in the truck were [evacuees] from the havoc created by Hurricane Katrina. Instead of citations they bought five pounds of hot dogs, soft drinks and assorted snacks to feed the hungry travelers. They even gave them money for gas! The troopers made only one request. They wanted to have their pictures taken with the people in the moving van. Then they sent them on their way.
News 24 [South Africa]: 5 Days of No Food, No Water
People became desperate. "I've been going to the stores, stealing food," Jess Morgan, 37, said. "It's called survival." Morgan said police were well aware of what he was doing, but had no problem with it, and even congratulated him for handing out food to the sick and elderly.
CBS News: Mayor: 10,000 May be Dead
Besides the lawlessness, civilian deaths and uncertainty about their families, New Orleans' police have had to deal with suicides in their ranks. Two officers took their lives, including the department spokesman, Paul Accardo, who died Saturday, according to Riley. Both shot themselves in the head, he said.
Adding to the misery of this beleaguered city, some 400 to 500 police officers from New Orleans' 1,600 member force were unaccounted for, Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said. Riley said some of the missing officers lost their homes and some are looking for their families. "Some simply left because they said they could not deal with the catastrophe," he said. Nagin said he was arranging to rotate out beleaguered emergency workers, who have been working virtually around the clock since before the storm hit.
He said police officers, firefighters and their families would get five or more days in cities with large numbers of hotel rooms, Atlanta and Las Vegas in particular. In addition to rest and relaxation, he said, they will have time to assess their personal situation.
Los Angeles Times: Movie Pilot's Company Wins Raves for Real Disaster Video
[Helicopter pilot Alan Purwin, chosen by the FAA to captain the single pool helicopter for the major networks] recalled what happened when they took up an officer for the New Orleans Harbor Police, who saw that his neighborhood was completely underwater.
"The look on his face I will never forget," Alpaugh said. "His head dropped into his hands and this grown man, this lieutenant of police, started to weep.... We all got choked up. We felt the enormity of his situation, and that everything he had worked for was gone."
Japan Today: New Orleans Police Chief Savages Press
The New Orleans force has been criticized in some circles for its actions in the onslaught of looting and violence, and collapsed communications after Katrina struck last Monday. But [New Orleans police Chief Edwin] Compass, who said two of his officers had committed suicide due to stress sustained in the terrible days of last week, turned on the press for their coverage of the episode.
"In the annals of history, no police force in the history of the world was asked to do what we were asked," Compass told reporters in Baton Rouge, which is serving as an emergency operations center for the relief effort. "I have an eight-month pregnant wife and a three-year-old daughter -- but not once did my feet leave the streets with my troops, I was first on the scene and the last one to leave," he said.
Compass blamed the looting and violence which scarred the city on a small group of "nefarious individuals" saying that most of the people in New Orleans were "good people, beautiful people." And he said that a few police who had reported to have handed in their badges, should not be seen as symbolic of the force as a whole. "You have some of the most heroic people in history, you had a few cowards who walked away and you interview them?" he shouted at reporters. (Wire reports)
Stuff [New Zealand]: Kiwi Hurricane Survivor Endures Days of Terror, Abuse
The Melbourne parents of a former Christchurch man, in his first year with the New Orleans Police Department, said they had not spoken to their son in seven days. James Gourlie, 30, was one of only six officers out of a district force of 200 who stayed behind to protect people. He told a Sunday newspaper that he and his fellow officers were carrying out patrols from their base at the Hampton Inn, which they had renamed "The Fortress". They had retreated to the hotel after their police station was over-run by mobs, angered at the authorities' apparent inability to help them.
"I made a commitment to serve the community and protect these people," he told the newspaper. That's why we are here; why we are not leaving. We knew the risks when we came onto the job. We knew one day we may not go home."
Gourlie returned to the city after getting his American wife, Jennifer, out of New Orleans. He said he and his fellow officers were angry when one of their number left for Texas on Friday, taking two automatic rifles and a shotgun. "They're preserving their lives, but they're risking their friends," he said. "You know what the New Zealand and Australian way is - and that ain't the Anzac way. You sacrifice yourself for your mates."
Spiegel Online [Germany]: Mayor of a Sinking City
On this particular Sunday, [NOLA Mayor Ray] Nagin has conferences scheduled into the night. First he drives past a police checkpoint in front of a casino on Canal Street. He thanks each officer, listens to their stories, bucks up their courage. Like him, they've been on duty for over a week; they're at the end of their strength. "No one on earth will be able to repay you for this work," he shouts as he leaves, to his boys in the department, "but the city looks up to you!"
"I never thought I'd sound so sentimental," he says wryly.
Arizona Central: Maricopa Co. Officers Reach New Orleans
Heavily armed Maricopa County sheriff's deputies entered the fight for control of New Orleans on Sunday, patrolling neighborhoods with exhausted local police in hopes of quelling looting and putting an end to the gunfire ravaging the beleaguered city.
"Thank God you are here," said Al La Croix, a 48-year-old resident carrying a .38-caliber pistol. "The shooting and looting started a week ago when the evacuation began. The looters went into houses and businesses, but some of us stayed to defend our homes. We're armed, and at night we have our pistols and shotguns to keep the looters out. Our police have tried to help, but they're way outnumbered and outgunned."
The Sheriff's Office caravan arrived in Gonzales, La., a few miles south of Baton Rouge, about midnight Saturday. Eight hours later an official from a statewide sheriff's organization swore them in as deputy sheriffs in Louisiana with law enforcement powers throughout the state. It was a scene repeated at several locations as sheriff's deputies from a number of states including Texas, Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi took their oaths and prepared to lend a hand to their New Orleans brethren.
2-The Advocate [Baton Rouge, LA]: Strain Forges Stronger NOPD
The O. Perry Walker High School library, outfitted with a bare light bulb and with a fan in a big wooden box that barely circulates the warm September air, doesn't look like the New Orleans Police Department's headquarters.
But it is.
The normal headquarters building at Tulane Avenue and Broad Street [in Algiers] is like most of New Orleans -- under water. This library is the fall-back position on West Bank, where flooding was minimal. A generator powers the fan and light.
NOPD Capt. Michael Pfeiffer said he watched dispatchers begin to take calls from frantic people as the water began to rise last Monday.
"These people were pleading for help from someone. These people are within inches of dying" before the attics they were trapped in filled up, he said. "That was tough. We are so used to sending help, but this time there was no help to send," Pfeiffer said. "It really took a toll on a lot" of officers and dispatchers, he said. "There were thousands of those calls," he said, adding that pleas came from large families, women about to deliver babies, the elderly.
Sgt. Melvin Gilbert, who heads juvenile crimes, said police officers have come to appreciate one another more. "Petty bickering and personality conflicts have been put aside." He has seven fellow officers living in his home in Algiers. Pfeiffer's nearby home is also a police dorm of sorts.
"We are seeing babies lying dead on the ground. Babies!" she said, adding that she has seen only one or two. While the official count Sunday afternoon was 59 dead, both she and Pfeiffer expect it to be 10 times, or 100 times or even 1,000 times greater.
Not far way at Oak Park Baptist Church are 84 officers under the command of Capt. Bernadine Kelly, who normally heads up the public housing police officer corps. "Every man and woman in this department is the greatest hero."
The Virginian Pilot [Norfolk]: Angels in Orange Give Help and Hope
We rarely remember society's rescuers until something goes terribly awry. Then we watch with admiration as they drop from the sky, climb tall ladders, scale buildings or revive the near-dead. Pictures of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have shown a deserving spotlight on the steadfastness and skill of the Coast Guard, our most unsung branch of the military. Amid so much despair and desolation, the rescuers gave help and hope to the stranded.
Along with the Coast Guard, there are plenty of other heroes in the Mississippi Delta this week. Countless firemen and police ferried the homeless to the Superdome, rescued residents from collapsing buildings and tried to help folks find loved ones.
Doctors worked tirelessly with few supplies to treat dying, ill and frightened patients. Some 11,000 National Guard troops stood watch, restored a measure of order to wasted neighborhoods, and braved gunfire from looters, even -- inexplicably -- during rescue attempts.
The word "hero," which used to be reserved for the extraordinary, has become mundane from overuse. But the actions of those searching through dangerous debris and devastating flood waters -- and braving gunfire and arsonists -- to rescue their fellow man are truly heroic. We might not want to trade places with them. But we're mighty glad they're there.