Posted on 09/09/2005 11:06:37 AM PDT by hipaatwo
Think local officials are less to blame for deaths in New Orleans than federal officials? In the most jaw-dropping story of the week, UPI has the police chief of Gretna, Louisiana, admitting that he closed off one of the major arteries out of New Orleans on Monday, before the storm hit:
"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.
"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said. The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.
He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx. "There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people. If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."
P.S. I'm sure that in a city surrounded on three sides by water, all roads and bridges are emergency evacuation routes. Was this the only one that was closed? I doubt it.
Most of the other highways out had been destroyed by the storm. Other routes were flooded.
If martial law is declared, then a local law enforcement officer no longer has any power - martial law means that the military assumes control of law enforcement.
Still doesn't absolve people from having enough brains or gumption to save their own lives.
Correct, thanks for the info.
However, if I'm under the impression that martial law has been declared and the military is not immediately on the scene, do I, as a (hypothetical) public law enforcement official, still have the responsibility to secure an area until the troops arrive?
Dude, give it up, will you?
For whatever reasons they were stuck in NOLA, some wanted to try and walk out. And they were blocked. On an official evacuation route.
That was wrong.
???
Those people weren't looking for "supplies" - - there were no "supplies" in Gretna. They wanted to cross the bridge in order to see what kinds of jewelry, stereo equipment, and silverware were left behind by the people who had evacuated Gretna.
Well, I think the basic premise for martial law is that civilian law enforcement is no longer functioning. Thus, if local law enforcement has a presence and can maintain control of a situation there would be no need for martial law.
this was the only one available, the others were under water...
Calm down--you're going to give yourself an ulcer.
It is no secret that there are still towns down south that operate this way.
If the stories are true (and not made up or exaggerated by two male paramedics from SAN FRANCISCO) this police chief will be dealt with.
Well, you can be disgusted all you want. Maybe I've just been hardened by my own experiences in these situations, but I still think that at the end of the day, you have to get up off yer behind and make an effort to get to safety instead of waiting around.
It's obvious that three factors are in play here in New Orleans. The first is that the city government failed utterly in every sense of the word. The evacuation plan, which was unveiled mere months before this disaster struck. The mayor and city officials never even attempted to implement the plan. A significant portion of the police force walked off, failed to show, or joined in the chaos. This tells me they seriously underestimated or misunderstood the threat in the beginning and then lost control along the way. In any case, they were derelict at least, criminally negligent at worst.
The second factor is the state response. The governor is apparently another Democratically-protected class of person (i.e. fat, stupid feminazi). The more I see and hear of what she did or did not do whent he crisis was upon her, the more it seems as if she was determined to ride this pony herself, garnering glory the whole way. When it all hit the fan, she issued conflicting orders and then sat on the fence, making the situation worse. She should be shot.
Finally, the citizens of New Orleans themselves covered themselves in glory (not)with the looting and shooting. A good number of those complaining about not having been aided seem to have nothing to say at all about the repeated cases of rescue workers being shot at or about how they arrived at the decision to steal and riot rather than leave town or prepare better.
And we're sitting here talking about a man who took the decision to keep his citizens, the people who pay his salary, safe? Especially after what we've seen on television or read in the papers? Would you want a hungry, rampaging, armed mob running roughshod through your town? I doubt it.
This wasn't about not getting the trash picked up or blocking people from voting.
People were friggin' dying.
And it was part of a larger problem of sloth, incompetence, corruption and bigotry that let to a natural disaster becoming a humanitarian one.
Because apparently the folks in the Superdome were treated as something less than human by the power structure in the state.
And too many people here apparently don't see a problem with that.
Then your comments don't make a whole lot of sense. Since this story is about the bridge being blocked AFTER the storm to prevent looting, and you said, "I rather have another city pillaged than thousands dead," if you are not talking about letting folks into Gretna to loot after the storm, you must be suggesting that looters should have been bused into Gretna BEFORE the storm hit.
Of course, if folks had been bused from the East Bank to the West Bank before the storms, and the levees on the West Bank had failed, you folks would be second guessing that decision as well.
Was this the only one that was closed? I doubt it.
Well said.
"Because apparently the folks in the Superdome were treated as something less than human by the power structure in the state."
Who voted them into office in the first place?
what routes? name them smarty.
If you're a sheriff and the last word you had was that martial law had been declared, you're no longer in charge of diddly. The military is.
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