Posted on 09/04/2005 12:45:08 AM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
The National Guard was slow to move troops into New Orleans because it did not anticipate the collapse of the city's police force after Hurricane Katrina, the guard's commander said.
Lieutenant General Steven Blum said the New Orleans police force was left with only a third of its pre-storm 1,500-person strength.
Some police had families caught up in the disaster, others were unable to make it back to their precincts because of the flooding, and yet others left their posts after deciding the situation had grown too dangerous.
"The real issue, particularly in New Orleans, is that no one anticipated the disintegration or the erosion of the civilian police force in New Orleans," Blum told reporters here.
"Once that assessment was made ... then the requirement became obvious," he said. "And that's when we started flowing military police into the theater."
On Friday, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin angrily denounced the slow federal response as too little, too late, charging that promised troops had not arrived in time.
"Now get off your asses and let's do something and fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country," the mayor said in remarks aired on CNN.
Blum said that since Thursday some 7,000 National Guard and military police had moved into the city.
But he said any suggestion that the National Guard had not performed well or was late was a "low blow."
The initial priority of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard forces was disaster relief, not law enforcement, because they expected the police to handle that, he said.
"We were pulsing forces in in very degraded infrastructure -- airports had reduced capabilities ... in some cases we only had one road in because of lack of bridges, flooding, loss of infrastructure," he said.
"So we couldn't rush to failure on this thing and we had to take a more measured approach on this thing than any of us wanted," he said.
When it became apparent that disorder in New Orleans should be the most immediate priority, the National Guard waited until they had enough forces in hand to make an overwhelming show of force, he said.
On Friday, while President George W. Bush was touring the stricken city, 1,000 military police and National Guard stormed the convention center where street gangs mixed in with thousands of others awaiting rescue had created a volatile situation, Blum said.
"Had we gone in with a lesser force we may have been challenged, innocents may have been caught in a fight between the guard and military police and those who did not want to be processed or apprehended," he said.
Bush, under intense criticism for the slow federal response, on Saturday ordered an additional 7,000 active duty and reserve ground troops to reinforce the National Guard.
That would raise the level of US military forces committed to the relief effort -- active duty as well as national guard and reserves -- to more than 50,000 by the end of next week.
Blum said that on Saturday there were 27,000 national guard troops in Louisiana and Mississippi. That number will grow to about 40,000 within the next week, he said.
There were varying estimates of the number of active duty troops already in the area as part of the relief of operations before Bush's order.
Major General Joseph Inge, deputy commander of the US Northern Command, put the number of active duty forces already on the ground at nearly 5,000 while Blum estimated the active force at 7,000, including sailors aboard navy ships.
The additional troops ordered in from the active force include 2,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division, 2,700 from the 1st Cavalry Division and 2,000 from the 1st and 2nd Marine Expeditionary Forces.
Oh well. That was fun while it lasted.
We don't take kindly to people casting aspersions about our forum and moderators 'round these parts.
I saw on CNN one NO police officer PUBLICLY BLAST his fellow officers who had fled, calling them COWARDS and unworthy to wear the badge, because they swore to protect and serve the people of New Orleans and did not. It was great. Shocked the Commie Network aired it.
They were too busy looting to bother with saving lives.
DNC
Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. 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.
Congratulations on your nephew! Even a bad force has a lot of good, dedicated officers.
One of my daughters is a police officer, and she said that to her, from a distance, it looked as if morale had probably not been very good in the NOPD even before the hurricane. Low pay, a crime-ridden city with (probably) political restraints on police activity, and a police department that had had some horrible scandals in the past - this doesn't make people very committed to risking their lives.
Also, do you know if the Mayor had actually ordered the use of force, or were the police only allowed to shoot if they were about to be killed themselves? If they didn't have protection from above in the chain of command, they would have been up on murder charges had they killed any of that scum.
May I ask: what is so hard about following reasonable rules regarding titles of articles?
Louisiana has had a century of corrupt everything running that state. Remember a few years back when the choice for governor came down to the mobster or David Duke?
"Now get off your asses and let's do something and fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country," the mayor said in remarks aired on CNN.
Good find! Reminder bump. ;-)
What are the penalties for law enforcement officers who abandon their duties during a situation like this?
Simple. If you are white you are fired. If you are black, nothing.
well , I wonder when a bipartisan commission will be empaneled [a la 9/11] , and now with Rehnquist's passing the bolsheviks will really be hoppin' mad[feigned of course] but oops,with all these BIG stories, it appears that AirAmerica and Eliot Spitzer can just play footsie ,... what a confluence of events!!
Can I watch?
Leave the mayor alone. He was being oppressed by George Whitey Bush and could not execute his brilliant plan to overcome Katrina's effects. The man beat him down. Just ask Jesse, Al and the rest of Klan with a Tan.
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