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.
I think we should accept them, then offer them all asylum.
bump
I think the first rule of survival is "Be Observant: Notice What's Going On All Around You." Anyone who was obeying that rule is now alive and healthy somewhere in Texas, Arkansas or Oklahoma. With a very few exceptions, the individuals who stayed in the path of the hurricane were victims of a nannystate mentality who couldn't believe that, when the chips were really and truly down, Nanny would hike up her skirts, split and leave them stranded for a few days with no one to rely on but themselves. Other victims, such as those who live in Baton Rouge, simply couldn't believe that a tidal wave of refugees would deprive them of their access to goods and services. Y2K was good practice, education and training for those willing to learn from it With winter coming, hordes of refugees on the roads, and several important aspects of the economy in flux, it's a good thing to stay alert and be prepared.
And good on you, Leadpenny. I live in a tourist mecca which is generally jammed to the gunnels on Labor Day Weekend. Yesterday was quieter than an off season Sunday. The local county fair, which the influx of liberal diletantes has tranformed into some kind of festival of ideological reorientation was virtually deserted. People are staying at home with their families. The smart folks here are buying up or cutting all the firewood they can in anticipation of a rough winter and skyrocketing natural gas costs while the liberals debate the ethical nature of putting particulate gasses into the air in the form of woodsmoke.
The reason the police force in New Orleans collapsed is the same reason a thug in Atlanta was able to grab a gun and shoot up a courtroom and then flee the scene--a police department run by incompetents.
In after the zot.
I just left a baseball game in OKC and sat in front of an FBI agent and talked with him during the game. According to him, NO police dept is authorized 2100 officers. Before the storm, normal attrition had reduced the force to 1800 active officers on duty. He stated there are now less than 800 NOPD officers (1000+ have quit). Many have just walked off the job and disappeared. Others have joined the street gangs. Federal law enforcement is heavily involved and many of the NOPD will be in jail when it is all over. Federal SWAT teams have been operating for several days and "taking out the trash". He says there is much going on behind the scenes that most people will never know about, but the house cleaning has been underway for several days and progress has been substantial
regards - red
Good on you Reformedliberal. You and your family are obviously one group of people who can learn from the experience of others. You're in before the Zot and I wish you were my neighbors. (Or maybe not, my self-righteous liberal neighbors purport to be vegans. Nevertheless, they are pleasingly plump. I have a plan to turn them into jerky if I need to.)
**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.**
BTTT!
They cannot blame the Guard or the President. There are so many other factors involved -- such as this one!
If you want to add editorial contents to the title, the mods allow you to enclose them in parentheses after the title. But yep, we want the real headlines here. If you don't like it, take it up with the boss.
I actually posted a nice answer to this clown before I scrolled down and noticed he just wouldn't let go of the whole "censorship" thing and earned himself a few hundred thousand volts. No doubt he's already over at LP telling his sad story.
The National Guard has come under criticism for not moving more quickly into New Orleans to help stem the upheaval. But Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, the head of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters on Saturday that the Guard had not moved in sooner because it had not anticipated the collapse of civilian law enforcement.
"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," General Blum said.
Some patrol officers said morale had been low on the force even before the hurricane. One patrolman said the complaints included understaffing and a lack of equipment.
"We have to use our own shotguns," said the patrolman, who did not want to be identified by name. "This isn't theirs; this is my personal gun."
Another patrol officer said that many of the officers who had quit were younger, inexperienced officers who were overwhelmed by the task.
But the stress is clearly getting to most of the officers on the force, especially those who patrol the streets and have found little or no support services, no place to billet and limited radio communications.
At dusk on Friday, officers at one precinct in the French Quarter cordoned off the block where their precinct sat and, armed with shotguns, stopped and inspected every car that passed.
"We're not writing tickets anymore," said one officer who pointed a shotgun into a car carrying two newspaper reporters. The journalists were allowed to proceed, but were warned not to pass the checkpoint again.
Both the Police and Fire Departments are being forced to triage the calls they get for help.
The firefighters are simply not responding to some fires. In some cases, they cannot get through the flooding. But in others, they decide not to send trucks because they are needed for more serious fires.
"We can't fight every fire the way we did in the past and try to put it out," Superintendent Parent told a group of firefighters on Saturday morning at a promotion ceremony in the Algiers section of New Orleans, a dry area. "We've got to use our resources the best we can."
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When the police department and law enforcement infrastructure of a city of this size and this location just collapses under the pressure of NO leadership, NO direction, NO resources ... who're you gonna blame?? The President?? the National Guard?? FEMA?? Where was the mayor and HIS PLAN .. his responsibility and oversight of the police force, not to mention logical evacuation direction?
If people have to point fingers, point them at the true source of the problems. When you see the extent of corruption, malfeasance and negligence, it's clear that New Orleans was lucky to have survived this long unscathed .. this city was destined to implode.
Bull. Anyone who knew anything about the NOPD did. And the mayor sure should have. And Nagin should never have bugged out to Baton Rouge. I wonder if any of the higher ups in the NOPD went with him?
The story is being manipulated by the MSM to blame Bush for EVERYTHING in NOLA!
Bump
She/He is on the short bus now, dressed as a football player (pads and all!) and her/his drink has one of those bending straws.
And they say that Stalinist don't care!
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