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.
Unable is the wrong word. Unwilling comes to mind. There was a MANDATORY evacuation ordered days before Katrina hit. Yet many able-bodied chose to stay. Now they're living in squalor, in a post-disaster, lawless area, and they are still choosing to stay (shooting at their own rescuers coming to offer aid via boats and helicopters).
Sure, we should save those who want to be saved, but we've also got to accept that some people WANT to be there.
Maybe the same route the busses are using.?
When I saw the images of people stealing shoes, I was reminded of the cultural rot of rap music and MTV-where having an expensive pair of shoes, wearing your pants below your a$$, and making sure you aren't dissed, are the most important things in the world.
NO is the epitome of what's wrong with this. The City is flooded with raw sewage, and decaying bodies, it's dark, there's no electricity, water, or food, but what do the thugs do? They steal shoes, and shoot at the people trying to rescue them. Thanks so much godless liberalism- Take a good long look at what your fomenting hate has produced.
On the other hand, while the thugs do their fake tough-guy impressions, and hurt others- the people with real toughness and courage emerged- they are the ones helping their fellow human beings, in spite of the horrors, uncertainties, and darkness of the situation-like the man who was pushing a person in a wheel chair through the sluge water to get him to safety,( or at least away from the worst parts of the city); or the man who said he had carried 50 people through the water, or the those who floated disabled people on air mattresses and pulled them through the debris, trying to get them out- they are the "tough" people. The men, women, and children, who are waiting patiently, in spite of hunger, thirst, and horrible living conditions- they are the courageous ones. The thugs making a bad situation worse- are cowards.
After watching the coverage-two things that are sorely lacking - spiritual leadership- and INFORMATION.
Fox New's Shep Smith (who has done an outstanding job of reporting) has been covering the people stuck on the freeway overpass- he kept asking for someone to tell him what they should do, or where they should go,- no-one answered, the cops drove right on by.
No wonder people are losing it- There needs to be some kind of leadership- someone asking the people to be tough, and patient, to please and hang in there,. Acknowledge that it 's a horrendous situation, but explain just how widespread the damage is, that's why it's taking longer to get to them.
(I'm sure they don't know how bad it is-that it covers three states. How could they? They don't have tv, or radio, nothing. All the reporters mentioned the communication bubble- even they don't have the whole picture. )
Most importantly someone needs to tell them that it's going to be alright- that there's a place for them, and people know what's happening, they just have to hang on- help is on the way. Tell them this is the biggest relief effort in US history.
(I'm not in any way making excuses for the thugs- they need to be shot, but, when people are the are in the dark, there are dead bodies, and rising rancid water, everywhere- and they have heard years and years of liberals telling them that no-one cares what happens to them - I can see where The Lord of the Flies mentality has taken over.
Another example of the communication problem is at the Super Dome - I saw a report where people didn't want to go to the Astro Dome because they figured it would be the same nightmare that the Super Dome is. They need to be told it's better.
Is there some way bull horns could be used to address the people, in as many of the damaged areas as possible ? (since they don't have radios or tv's) I mean tell them something, anything. Maybe read a currnet newspaper to them with the Bull horn?
Tell them how widespread the damage is. Give them some hope. Maybe Jesse Jackson could go there ?
It's such an awful situation. People need to know what's going on. They need to be distracted so they can get through it.
Prayers being said for all in the destruction areas.
I could see someone taking a pair of Nikes if they had no shoes, or some food or water, but that's about it. Also, have they said anything about gators or mocasins being in the City??? I've heard newscaster twits saying there are critters in the water, but are there any sigtings??? If there are "dead people" and "pets" floating in the water I suspect gators won't pass up an easy meal, and once they know they've found a place with an ample food source to loot... Well, they're oportunists too.
I'm certainly not condoning the greedy looting or lawlessness that's going on down there. No excuse for that. On the other hand, I could understand people being disoriented and confused and scared, given the drastic way their city has been impacted. Many of the people don't want to leave family behind either. That place is a real mess. Having gone through the 94 quake in a place where 25% of the population had to move out I can understand some of what's happening. The first thing I heard when I went outside at just after 4:31 a.m. after being woken out of a sound sleep was a loud rushing noise that sounded like water. Probably a water heater fell over I thought, but was wrong. A block wall had fallen over and ruptured a medium pressure gas line going to an apartment bldg. A few minutes earlier, just after the shaking stopped, the first thought that popped into my head was "Some people just died." Yeah, and more were soon to follow, the closest about three blocks. The first thing I saw when the sun came up was the smoke from the fires on Ventura Blvd. The gas was still gushing, and contunued to gush for 7 1/2 hours.
I talked with a guy from the gas company the next day about how to fix such a gas leak, and asked him for some DC plugs. He got kind of snotty and told me I shouldn't be messing with gas company property. I informed him in no uncertain terms that the next time his company so irresponsibly let their gas escape for "hours" they should come fully prepared to take a bench vise off their line that would be used to pinch it shut. I still have the DC (tapered damage control) plugs, but hope I never need them.
This is a city where, whne I was teaching, kids often enrolled in college and don't attend so they could live off their grant money...which to them seems like cushy bucks.
When you were raised with the entitlement mindset, and low expectations about the quality of life, the little stuff seems good.
Unfriken' believable..
Oh right. A lot of people need jewelry, TVs, cases of Nikes, rafts full of beer to survive. And on-the-job cops need armfuls of DVDs to survive.
>> If the situation was reversed you would be doing the exact same thing
Believe it or not, there are still some of us who use crisis situations to rise to the occasion, who do our best under pressure, who try to help others when things go wrong.
Give us a break, DieselBoy.
This is true only in part.
There is a moderately large (say, ten million) population of third-world people living among us. They are concentrated in certain urban and rural areas, and if you don't live or work where they live, they are quite invisible.
Most of them are of African descent, but most Americans of African descent are not like them.
This group of people has little political power, except in urban areas of high concentration, of which the former city of New Orleans was clearly one.
These people of whom I speak are not in a position to benefit from work, or government $ for schooling, or affirmative action (all of which have been a tremendous engine of progress for many other African-descended Americans). They are living like rural Africans live today, they are way, way out of their depth in a 21st-Century first world nation, and nobody has any idea what to do about them.
These aren't the Black folks I know. The actions of these looters have besmirched humanity of all colors. For some of us, civilization is an uncomfortable garment we shed as soon as the opportunity arises.
Not by you. obviously.
Lots and lots of African-descended Americans have taken advantage of the opportunities presented to them after 1955. If you look at metro DC, for example, there are thriving black communities everywhere.
However, there is a remnant of several millions, perhaps as many as ten million, who are not able to coexist with a modern society. Under segregation, they were mixed in with other black people (not "distinguishable", to use your word), but now that blacks have the mobility to escape from them, they are being concentrated in certain urban and rural areas where a distinctive third-world culture is emerging.
But if you cannot tell the difference between people who own their own homes in Prince Georges County and urban looters, you need new glasses.
Actually, there have been 3 extended blackouts in NYC that I can remember.
The biggie was in 1965, and there was no looting.
There was one in the 1980s, with terrible looting.
And there was one under Rudy, or immediately post-Rudy, with no looting.
It matters who's in charge.
Left there by white boys and girls from the night before.
You're a freaking idiot. Most, not all, people that live in poverty in the "deep south" are too freaking lazy to work.
You're a moron.
Yes there is Euro leftwing audience that will always sniff at America's "treatment" of her blacks. These people are to the US general population as Yankees are to Southerners.
But otherwise the rest of world is shockingly full of racial realists. Many Euros and Asians view this stuff in stark racial terms.
This is unvarnished, Sir. Good for you.
Seal off NO permanently. Let those left in there duke it out. Don't let anyone or anything in or out. The virus must run its course.
This is the crux. And one of the most politically incorrect thoughts a person can voice today. The USA has a huge remnant population of Africans who have never assimilated after hundreds of years in North America. Their behavior is indistinguishable from their kin in Haiti or the Dark Continent. They are only a subgroup of American blacks but a significant drain on us all.
Amazing factoid. 700 rounds is the equivalent of a serious skirmish in Iraq or any other war zone. N.O. is just another gap in civilization's thin veneer. The mayor's undisciplined radio interview this morning just reaffirms.
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