Posted on 09/01/2005 10:22:08 PM PDT by nickcarraway
New Orleans has one of the highest murder rates in the country. By mid-August of this year, 192 murders had been committed in New Orleans, "nearly 10 times the national average," reported the Associated Press. Gunfire is so common in New Orleans -- and criminals so fierce -- that when university researchers conducted an experiment last year in which they had cops fire 700 blank rounds in a neighborhood on a random afternoon "no one called to report the gunfire," reported AP.
New Orleans was ripe for collapse. Its dangerous geography, combined with a dangerous culture, made it susceptible to an unfolding catastrophe. Currents of chaos and lawlessness were running through the city long before this week, and they were bound to come to the surface under the pressure of natural disaster and explode in a scene of looting and mayhem.
Like riotous Los Angeles since the 1960s, New Orleans has been a wasteland of politically correct dysfunction for decades -- public schools so obviously decimated vouchers were proposed this year (and torpedoed by the left), barbaric gangster rap culture no one will confront lest they offend liberal pieties, multiculturalist frauds who empower no one but themselves, and cops neutered by the NAACP and ACLU.
Criminals have ruled New Orleans for some time, convincing many members of the middle class, long before the hurricane, that the city was unlivable. In 1994, New Orleans was the murder capital of America. It had 421 murders that year. Criminologists predicted 300 murders this year, a projection that now looks quite conservative.
Criminals dominate their neighborhoods to the point that people don't even call in crimes. The district attorney's office, tacitly admitting that the city's law-abiding citizens live in fear, has taken the "unusual" step of establishing a local witness protection program to encourage the reporting of crime, reports AP.
According to the New Orleans Police Foundation, most murderers get off -- only 1 in 4 are convicted -- and 42 percent of cases involving serious crimes since 2002 have been dropped by prosecutors.
Meanwhile, cops, when they can get away with it, have been living out of town. It is far too scary for them and their families. New Orleans Police officers are required to live in the city but many ignore this residency requirement, according to the Times-Picayune. The paper discovered that many top-ranking New Orleands cops lived in the suburbs and that most cops, both black and white, wanted the residency requirement rescinded.
For reasons of political correctness -- critics of law enforcement say lifting the residency requirement will mean more white cops eager to brutalize residents of the inner city and fewer black cops understanding of them -- the residency requirement remains, though cops breaking the rule told the Times-Picayune that it seriously hurts recruitment. It also -- this is particularly evident in Los Angeles where cops involved in the Ramparts scandal turned out to be ex-criminals -- distorts recruitment.
If the New Orleans Police Department has appeared feeble during the chaos -- and in some cases complicit in it -- policies like the residency requirement explain the breakdown. (Perhaps another factor that has rendered the NOPD feckless in the face of a rising murder rate is the criticism of its handling of a minority Mardi Gras.) Americans who have seen cops join in the looting ask: Why are police officers behaving like criminals? Well, because PC police departments like the NOPD hire them. Aggressive, let's-just-meet-the-quota-style affirmative action has become the door through which criminals enter the police academy.
More than the physical foundations of New Orleans will need to be rebuilt over the next few years. Its politically correct culture in which pathologies are allowed to fester in the name of "progress" forms much of the debris that must be cleared away if civilization is to return to New Orleans. A city which boasts as one of its businesses memorial "death t-shirts" -- clothing made popular by the frequency of gangland slayings in New Orleans that say things like, "Born a Pimp, Died a Playa" -- was headed for collapse even without a hurricane, and had become, as the exodus of cops illustrates, unlivable.
Conservative black leaders have been mau-maued into silence whenever they tell the truth about this barbarism and call for dramatic reform. But they are the ones who must lead the city now, and the phonies at organizations like the NAACP who despite all their rhetoric haven't done a thing to help the black underclass should step aside. Hurricane Katrina has made vivid the civilizational collapse they have long tried to conceal.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.
Diesel boy , your pomposity is iritating. I have been down and out, I worked my ass off to get a roof over my head. I WAS RAISED RIGHT!! I grew up in an old school Dem. family. My parents told me that the govt had to have safety nets for people who needed them and always added. " And thats not you!". We come from a great tradition summed up by this adage, "Too poor to paint, too proud to whitewash".
I meant with their stolen Caddies
"That armpit of the US should not be re-built."
I hope it's rebuilt. I do not want those thugs moving next to me. I can't guard my house 24-7.
As one whose family hails from the Crescent City, I have to admit that maybe this tragedy should be viewed as the removal of a cancer.
Somebody cue up the violins, (and get that DU refugee some Kleenex).
They ought to be ashamed of themselves!
America had a 30% unemployment rate in the 1930's. Back then, unemployed and hungry men roamed the country looking for WORK, not for victims.
They rode in railroad boxcars, if necessary.
Being poor is absolutely no excuse for becoming a ruthless criminal.
When I hear this crap, "What were the poor of New Orleans supposed to do?"
I answer:
"They were supposed to do what they were warned and GET OUT using FREE transportation offered, traveling to the FREE shelters waiting with FREE food.
Keep in mind a whole army of disaster relief people were being mobilized before the hurricane.
Oh, plueeeeeeeze. Its friggin' liberalism gone amok down there. So much so, that people can't think for themselves and need a government program (aka handout) to "help" them.
What channel are you watching?
I don't have anything to add. I just thought your post warranted repeating.
Acceptable lying and killing 101--Oh Osama, I so admire you, no I don't have a 45 caliber under my shirt, I just want to be near you, point blank range is my desire, oh holy one.
yup , did you hear the "whiners" crabbin' about the food they were given?????
And if god is merciful and just.. San Fransisco should vibrate into the ocean..
If you all want a good laugh as to what ignorance and corruption has done to Augusta, GA. I invite you to do a Google Search for "Charles Walker". He is a shining example of Liberalism gone bad.
This "pillar of society" even supported his son to run for Congress, and the Dims actually propped him up as a candidate! Well, "Champ Walker" (the son) has as much intelligence as a freshly squeezed turd.
Please bookmark our weekly paper, the Metro Spirit (every Thursday), and read the "Insider" opinion column. You may appreciate your own local government.
I got you. You're the guy who when asked by the SS where the Jews were, said, I cannot tell a lie, they're under the stairs. Your absolute moral code is not admirable and unjustifiable. Also, since you oppose killing I guess you don't believe in self-defense or justifiable war. Osama your a#$.
In the Great Blackout of 2003, there was plenty of looting in New York City. I stand by my earlier point.
It's impossible to discern what the percentage is of looters just trying to survive and keep their families alive until somebody rescues them, as opposed to how many are just theives, thugs and scumbags. So in all fairness I must agree with you. It's just plain wrong to condemn these folks accross the board.
I read an interview with a 'looter' who said he was a Christian. He felt terrible about breaking a window to get some food, but said he hadn't eaten in two days. Then I read about the thugs who are raping and carjacking, and stealing electronics and guns. So it's wrong to start gunning down the looters at will, because you just might be murdering a poor slob trying to get a loaf of bread for his family, or something to barter with. These people are living in a nightmare, I pray to God for them all.
don't be thick--its my super clever plan to get OBL,.... keep it under your hat.....
I wonder if the two are distinguishable.
Want to reconsider your bigoted position?
Whether they stay or go, they will have no food or water. However, they have a better chance of finding relief if they try to leave.
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