Well, my nephew didn't take off, he's been there since the beginning and still is. When I get the chance I will ask him, so far it is difficult for him to get information out, only two times this week, once early Friday morning and once yesterday.
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.