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."
Maybe send an email to Shep?
Everyone is focusing on the bridges!
It was a tactical move by a law enforcement type with limited resources.
He got everyone out of his town and to safety, and then it was his responsibility to protect what was there.
"Locked down and secured" means just that. Like it or not, this guy was doing his job for thems that pay him.
Locked down and secure does not mean to let folks wander through, knowing that you don't know what they will do.
I don't even know what to say anymore Mo.
Don't try to Introduce Facts into a Good FR Thread!
Then WTH was with this?:
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."
I bet the bridge was open when everybody was told to "get out of New Orleans - - there's a big hurricane coming!"
What's that saying? You snooze, you lose? Hats off to Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department. He protected his city, and if I was a resident there, I would be very grateful indeed.
I really can't argue with that sentiment.
It was shut down for days afterwards, long after the hurricane was gone.
Any more irrelevant facts you wish to inject in order to muddy the waters here?
Very little of their so-called report is verifiable. Reads more like a list of yahoo or CNN accounts strung together and turned into a perfect liberal taking point story. Particularly the part where the now 200 of them left the Superdome, "determined and optimistic" and gathered other proletarians at the Convention Center. Outcast by the bourgeois, they marched to the interstate on their own "long march", against all odds, against the capitalist overmesiters who were keeping the working peoples down.
Reads like a bunch of marxist swill and pegged the BS meter full to the far wall from the get go.
The incidents described in the article happened AFTER the hurricane had passed.
Yes, let's protect property and leave starving and dehyrdated people trapped in NOLA to die.
Nice value system.
Heck I was in Los Angeles and I knew the only way out of New Orleans was the Crescent City connection...it was repeated over and over on the scanner feed. LSP and National Guard directing people.
Clearly you've never had to deal with a crowd.
Actually I was part of the 'crowd' fleeing from the huge S.F. Bay Area fire (lost my home) about a dozen years ago. What I witnessed was frantic police officers making very poor decisions that COST some lives, including that of an 18 year old girl whom they told to stay in her home (she was alone) as 'help was coming'. The house burned down with her in it. My conclusion is that when people are fleeing and fighting for survival, it truly is 'every man for himself' and the police are not very helpful, to say the least. They are trained to 'group think' not think on their feet in a true crisis.
This story fits with the facts. Some of the details may be hyperbole, but the basic story appears accurate from several related events.
LOL! Nobody in NO starved to death.
Plenty of them died of dehydration.
Many were diabetic and needed food to avoid going into insulin shock.
Nice LOL by the way at human suffering.
Limbaugh mentioning this story now.
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