Masques of Death (A sewer of applied liberalism, New Orleans was lawless long before this week.)

The American Prowler ^ | 9/2/2005 | George Neumayr

[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.

[Southack]

"Unfortunately ive been to the all black communities of the south."

Communities in the heart of the Black Belt farming districts and in Deep South inner cities are not the 3rd World. A typical Deep South inner city school district will have average SAT scores above 800...which, while low for the U.S., will put to shame the test scores of the illiterates in the slums of Brazil or even Mexico City.

Starving children aren't found mobbing every new visitor into each area in the Deep South, either...something that typifies every 3rd World nation.

Ergo, you know not of what you speak.

I live here. You must not...

[Nam Vet]

...then the jewelry stores would have been safe. What's wrong with those cops?

Cops had first dibs on the jewelry stores.

Nam Vet

[DieselBoy]

Ever been to Canton, Mississippi? It is hardly comparable to Ontario, California. Lots of shacks, burned out buildings. If large states like Ca, and TX are somewhat civilized then the poorest states in the union, the south, is on the oppisote end of the spectrum. Mass poverty in the places ive been to there and it isnt all urban.

[Southack]

"From all of the coverage ive seen, people have been trying to get the hell out of NO any way they can."

Odd. The TV coverage that I've seen shows able-bodied adult men who refuse to walk or swim (it's the Deep South in Summer, that water won't freeze you) or boat out...but are either whining for government to come save them or are shooting at government agents and volunteers coming to save them.

What channel are you watching?

[Nam Vet]

Got a link, by chance?

Nam Vet

[lawdog]

Some truth there... but when is the last time you've seen uniformed police officers looting...and the rioting in L.A. was confined..I will agree but this is just anothr case of entitlement rage... desperate people hell bent on survival don't fill up on clothing and jewelry when drinking water and food are needed.

[Lancey Howard]

You yourself implied that these people were "sitting at home waiting on the government to come rescue" them. There you have it - - Democrat liberalism in a nutshell.

[DieselBoy]

Yea, kind of hard to make a long trip with no food or water.

[DieselBoy]

Actually what i have said several times and will only repeat one more time. When you dont have any money, a vehicle, or anywhere else to go. What are you supposed to do?

Answer that question and this whole crisis would have been averted.

[justa-hairyape]

Yea, kind of hard to make a long trip with no food or water.

The people we see whining are the ones expecting uncle sugar daddy to get them out of the New Orleans Bowl. The ones we hear who are happy to be safe are the ones that said screw this, I am getting myself out of here. Having said that, there are some legitimate problems now with decontamination. These people have been swimming in water that contained dead bodies. Would you want them in your living room ? The officials are telling them they need to be decontaminated (television interview).

[flashbunny]

Your point? You had one?

Well, I did answer. I'd use what I had and my brain to secure my home and my family first. You don't have to be well off to save up 2 weeks worth of food - it's actually very cheap if you catch sales or off brands. You can get food that lasts for years and will keep you going for a day for sometimes under a dollar a serving. It's not health food, but it will keep you going.

Look at the tsunami victims. They WISH they could be as well off as the 'poor' people in new orleans. America's poor people would be upper middle class - or even rich - by their standards. Yet they didn't loot. They preserved order and worked together. This, frankly, is an embarrassment in front of the world.

But you need to face reality.

The city of new orleans did just what you said they should have done. Be compassionate. Let the looters "take what they need".

Never mind that the looting started even before the hurricane hit, and people were stealing luxury items.

But they did it your way.

And it got out of control.

Instead of being stopped, looters were emboldened to loot more.

They broke into houses and stores and stole guns.

They became armed, roving bands that terrorized the innocent people you claim to be standing up for. Assaulting, raping, and murdering them.

That is the result of what you think should have been done.

Cause and effect. You get more of the behavior your reward. They rewarded lawlessness, and they got more of it.

I don't why you can't see that, or why you still think your hand wringing and sticking your head in the sand is the better approach.

Is it worse to shoot criminals or leave them running free to prey on the innocent? Which do you prefer?

[DieselBoy]

Refer to post 49.

[expatguy]

Are you actually suggesting that stealing property from another person is justified under the circumstances?

An American Expat in Southeast Asia

[Southack]

"Yea, kind of hard to make a long trip with no food or water."

Why do you say that? How far would one have to walk from NO to first find an area connected to the grid?

I've made 15 mile per day mountain treks. In 4 days you're 60 miles away, and that's far rougher terrain than the nearly flat Delta area.

...And if you don't have water, it doesn't really matter if you stay in place or move...you're dead. So if they aren't in the process of dying, they must have access to water...

...and if not, then that's all the more reason to get moving.

[Colorado Doug]

Obviously hardly anyone posting has been to the deep south and seen the type of poverty that these people live in. The deep south is a 3rd world country. The people that are left are looting trying to survive. No food, water, shelter, anything and you cry that people are going to break into these stores for their own survival?? If the situation was reversed you would be doing the exact same thing. Give me a break.....

Of course that explains the rapes and murders too. They must not be that hungry or they wouldn't have the energy for raping and pillaging. New Orleans is not the only place hit by the hurricane. It is the only place that the population is being terrorized though. Give me a break, indeed.

[Deetes]

I haven't found the story yet , but it was during a interview of a official in NO on CNN . There was a gang of looters in a shoot out with the cops and 2 got killed. They are going house to house looking for jewelry etc.....

[wildcatf4f3]

I don't need a flat screen TV to survive. Do you?

[zeller the zealot]

I was born and raised in New Orleans. I can tell you that the racial tension is prevalent in almost every aspect of life there. It is not hopeless, though.
The images I see on TV confirm to me what I have long believed. There can be no racial harmony outside of Christ. Around the world, various ethnic groups hate each other and think nothing of the value of life. In Sudan, black Muslims rape and kill black Christians. In Zimbabwe, Black militants drove out the white farmers from their farms and confiscated them. Now the country faces famine. Only in the Christian church can races set aside their hatred for one another, because only the Christian church says to put others ahead of yourself. Self sacrifice is not a virtue in Buddhism, Islam, or any other faith.

Also the lack of good leadership in NO and LA is astonishing. I can't help but be reminded of how tough a mayor Guilliani was. No one dared loot or riot after 9/11, or even during the blackout. Police were everywhere. Nagin and Blanco look lost. The woman actually almost cried on the air. Why she didn't give order to shoot looters on sight from the beginning is beyond my understanding. It would have nipped the looting and lawless behavior in the bud. Now it is too late. The rest of the country has seen a third world country in their midst.

[Lancey Howard]

When you dont have any money, a vehicle, or anywhere else to go. What are you supposed to do?

I dunno.... I saw one guy floating a tub full of stolen beer and whiskey down the street. I guess that's what I'd do if I was the total loser you described.

[wildcatf4f3]

Maybe a lake effect tsunammi will erase Detroit.