I have known lots of NOPD. This is uncalled for. Many of them are good, hardworking guys who want to be the good guy in a city where crime is very high per capita.
They are paid low. They have to often work a second job to make ends meet. More than one family has met the qualifications for food stamps. And the fact that they are paid low enough to make that qualification is a sad thing in and of itself.
They had a bad job to do anyway, policing a city that required big skills in crowd control and dealing with a rough criminal element.
And then the storm came.
The men in this situation faced their entire lives shattered. Their homes were gone, their families threatened or dead, having to move through chaotic situations surrounded by death, lack of communications, and being fired on.
The guys in NYC were gallant and heroic, but didn't have their entire lives destroyed. They had homes to go back to. Their loved ones weren't lost in that morass of black water. What they were trying to protect, the people of New York, the property of New York, mostly existed.
The guys in New Orleans had it differently. They were expected to police what was no longer a city, but a swamp of dead bodies, looters, and frightened people.
I can understand why some left. I can understand why some suicided. I am amazed that any stayed on the job at all. Those guys are heros in my book. To stay on the job when all you have worked for is washed away in the muck shows a heroism that goes beyond the pale of many of us.
I won't deny there is graft in NO. I won't deny the corruption. But to paint all those guys like they were crooks is wrong, wrong, wrong, and shameful.
If you can't stand heat, don't even go into the kitchen. Nobody made them put on their badges. New Orleans always was a target for major hurricanes. Any cop going to work in New Orleans should have known the day might come when New Orleans would be slammed big-time. All the experts predicted it.
Soldiers are expected to do their duty, even when all of their buddies are being shot to pieces around them.
Why couldn't the 200 AWOL cops have jumped into the idle school buses and started driving their fellow citizens out of harm's way?
I understand one New Orleans boy had the guts to steal a bus and drive a bunch of his fellow citizens to safety in Texas.
That young man apparently instinctively knew a cluster foxtrot when he saw it and knew this disaster called for extraordinary action, not inaction.
There is no excuse for allowing armed thugs to take over the city. NONE