Posted on 09/03/2005 9:26:08 PM PDT by Jet Jaguar
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 - Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers have walked away from their jobs and two have committed suicide, police officials said Saturday.
Some officers officially told their superiors they were leaving, police officials said. Others worked for a while and then stopped showing up. Still others, for reasons not always clear, never made it in after the storm.
The absences come during a period of extraordinary stress for the New Orleans Police Department. For nearly a week, many of its 1,500 members have had to work around the clock, trying to cope with flooding, an overwhelming crush of refugees, looters and occasional snipers.
P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police, said most of his officers were staying at their posts. But in an unusual note of sympathy for a top police official, he said it was understandable that many were frustrated. He said morale was "not very good" after nearly a week of deprivation and danger.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.
Translation: better to have massive casualties and to show the world a Somalia on the Mississippi than to take a chance on the remote possibility that Bush might look good.
A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.
Use it that authority, Mr. President. When in comes to LA officials, you are dealing with evil incarnate.
"My officers are walking around in wet shoes."
No doubt they will use this when they apply for disablity pension under "job related stress"
"I saw the statement,and i still don't understand it."Glad someone brought that up.It's sounds kinda backwards to me as well,but i'm a republican,maybe that's the problem(sarcasm intended).If local and state officials would have turned over responsibility to the feds asap they would have been better positioned to dodge responsibility.No way to blame this on the federal gov.Responsibility for this cluster F rests solely on the shoulders of local and state officials
Sad but true.
http://www.vh1.com/news/articles/1508855/20050902/index.jhtml?headlines=true
I don't know, but I expect that number to be high. I am appalled by the corruption that's been exposed, but I'm sick of seeing good cops blamed for the corruption of a few.
Sorry pal, when 2/3 of your police force quit, that is NOT "most staying at their posts."
Then again, this is New Orleans, the land of the Big Queasy and when only 33% of the people show up for work, that 's a case for throwing a party on Bourbon Street.
40 years of socialism and a welfare state has degraded our nation's big cities to this decayed level.
Not if it is who I heard it was. He was one of the FEW good cops on the NOPD and a former tenant of mine. Really good guy--haven't heard the details.
Come on. Corruption in the NOPD was pervasive. Nobody who worked there would not see it around them all the time. Not much separates our big-city PDs from PDs in Mexico.
Microfiber towels, a VERY small amount of water, and rub lightly (power off!). Works great on telephones, too. If you have a white towel, you will be a little disgusted at how cruddy a keyboard can get.
Thanks for the help.
Now, the question is, where do I pick up microfiber towels? The closest I've got on hand are dishtowels and regular bathtowels.
According to AP:
"In addition to civilian deaths, New Orleans' police department has had to deal with suicides in its 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."
I miss my old keyboard from work, but eventually it just quit working for some unknown reason. I think I used it for about six years or so, and some of the keys, especially the left shift, had indentations where I hit them all the time. I think I went through three computers with that keyboard, but I couldn't really justify going through much time and effort fixing it.
So sad.
Politcally it is not much different from Newark, N.J.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9156612/page/2/
Middle of the page
Thank you for that information.
Good pay and good recruiting help make a good defence against police corruption.
Nagin is everyone's favorite guest--the expert who can tell you all the ways it's George Bush's fault. No mention of whether he ever read his job description, or his own emergency plan. He considers all the rules that require local and state levels to request fed. involvement to be BS. Bureaucracy costing lives. If he was going to change the longstanding emergency response system, I wish he'd done it before last week.
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