Posted on 09/12/2005 7:40:07 PM PDT by Graybeard58
HOUMA -- During the information vacuum following Hurricane Katrina, locals made scores of frantic calls to area newspapers and police to report the unimaginable: Evacuees from New Orleans were being stripped of loaded guns at a Houma shelter. Roving gangs from the inner city were patrolling local neighborhoods. A woman was carjacked at the mall.
From the shocking to the unbelievable, none of the anonymous rumors called in to police and other agencies over the past two weeks were true.
In fact, police report overall crime in Terrebonne Parish has dropped 40 percent since the hurricane made landfall, forcing thousands to flee their homes and plant new roots along the Gulf Coast.
"We’ve had fewer crimes since the hurricane than we had before. It took a dive," said Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter. "My detectives are not out there working cases. They’re out there doing relief efforts."
Yet assurances from police that violent crimes are almost nonexistent in Houma and surrounding areas, even after the region welcomed more than 2,000 New Orleans hurricane survivors to settle here, have not quelled the rumor mongering.
The Courier received reports over the past two weeks alleging, inaccurately, that riots broke out in a Lafourche civic center, that an armed gunman held up a convenience-store clerk, that New Orleans residents were looting local homes and that a white woman was raped by a black man in a parking lot in broad daylight.
Experts who study the psychology of disasters and the way Americans react to the unknown say rumors spin out of control when people cannot obtain answers. Without answers to their questions, people invent their own, creating rumors, superstitions and off-kilter tales about who their enemies are.
In many ways, rumors reflect the realities and mindsets of the people who spread them. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the rumors appear to be coming from residents who are unable to grasp the experiences shared by the mostly poor, black storm victims evacuated from New Orleans, said pop-culture expert Elayne Rapping, professor of American studies at the University of Buffalo.
When people cannot understand another’s plight, they choose rumor over truth, said Rapping. What’s striking about the rumors spread so quickly after Katrina devastated Louisiana’s largest city -- not just in small communities like Houma but also Baton Rouge and several Mississippi towns -- is that there are racial undertones to the dangerous gossip.
That’s because most rumors center on a group of people -- New Orleans evacuees -- living in a certain place -- shelters. Sometimes the rumors specify race. But almost all the time it’s understood, said Rapping.
"White people are starting these rumors to blame the victim," said Rapping. "They don’t understand that the citizens from New Orleans are scared to death and powerless. What’s happening is racism, the major problem of our country. These kinds of rumors are deadly."
Something else that could be fueling the rumors, said Stefan Schulenberg, an assistant professor of clinical psychology at the University of Mississippi, is misinformation and mistrust. Residents who cannot relate to what many New Orleans storm survivors have endured -- from losing a home to struggling for survival to being without food and water for days -- assume the worst. Key to quelling rumors, said Schulenberg, is community dialogue and rapid response so the instant a rumor emerges, law enforcement and agencies band together to snuff it, which local officials did twice last week with little result. A delayed response or intervention allows rumors to perpetuate, to feed on themselves and snowball dangerously toward mass hysteria. Think of the alien-invasion yarn "War of the Worlds," which sent Americans into a panic when Orson Welles broadcast it as a radio play in 1938.
"The community’s response will be absolutely critical to the mental health of these evacuees," said Schulenberg. "If they’re pointing fingers and looking for blame, that could be devastating. It could exacerbate the adjustment issues these people already have."
It’s important to note that rumors are often spread by a fraction of the population. Larpenter said he suspects those spinning tales of rioting, looting, raping and mayhem are insecure, sheltered from reality, even coddled. But whoever they are, they’re a minority, he said. Most Terrebonne residents want to open their homes to hurricane victims, not spread ugly stories about them.
"These are people that have never gone through a tragedy or lived from check to check," said Larpenter. "These are people that have been isolated all their lives, sheltered all their lives, and they never had to deal with trauma in their lives. These are narrow-minded people who have never seen the real world."
While that might be the case, Rapping said rumors are a constant in American history. Tragedies bring out the best in people, as volunteers empty their cupboards for the needy. But they also can uncover mankind’s worst, she said.
"My friend has a saying that in every paranoid fantasy there’s a grain of truth," said Rapping. "Well, the grain of truth in this paranoid fantasy is the hatred of black people. Something like this happens, this horrible tragedy, and it brings the racism out in the open. It’s not shared by everyone, but, obviously, it does exist."
Misconceptions, distortions, and outright tall tales are going to be around longer than the flood waters.
False.
"They don’t understand that the citizens from New Orleans are scared to death and powerless.
False.
What’s happening is racism,
False.
the major problem of our country.
False.
These kinds of rumors are deadly."
False.
Hey, like all truths, we seen it on MSM. What are we to believe, you or our lying eyes?
Most people were gone...people couldn't call the police...
It might be possible to tell if there was more crime than usual - if it overwhelmed what was covered up by the disaster itself, but no real way to tell if it was actually lower.
No phone service in Terrebonne.
There were British and Australian tourists trapped in New Orleans (no car) who also sought shelter at the civic buildings and rode the buses to Texas. They were the victims of horrible racism and violent threats.
The American media never discussed that racism.
There were also rumors in New Orleans that black people were being gathered into the Convention Center so that white people could torch the whole place and blame it on a gas leak. Now just who was it that started that rumor? White people?
The MSM has poisoned this poor man's mind.
All because the pointy heads in NYC want George W. Bush out of the White House by any means necessary.
Quite the expert on small town Louisiana is she? I've been to Houma numerous times. Has she?
I will accept that there is little or no rise in crime after the storm there. But her rational is suspect.
This article is about Houma,Louisana and the rumors there.
George Bush needs to stop eating babies and fire all the racist rapelophobes in his corrupt administration! No buses for oil! Vive la Greyhound!
In fact, police report overall crime in Terrebonne Parish has dropped 40 percent since the hurricane made landfall, forcing thousands to flee their homes and plant new roots along the Gulf Coast.
"We’ve had fewer crimes since the hurricane than we had before. It took a dive," said Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter. "My detectives are not out there working cases. They’re out there doing relief efforts."
You have had no crime because you HAVE probably evacuated your criminals to poor, unsuspecting cities all over the US.
White people are starting these rumors to blame the victim," said Rapping. "They don’t understand that the citizens from New Orleans are scared to death and powerless. What’s happening is racism, the major problem of our country. These kinds of rumors are deadly.
WHITE people watch the news and SEE the looting and whose doing it. Please crawl back in your hole and come out when you have something intelligent to say.
These kinds of rumors are deadly."
No. They are informative. Big difference.
Saying white people did this and white people did that is getting so lame. I can't believe the ingratitude of some people. Keep on biting the hand that feeds you and YOU might find out how little WE can do.
She mean white people? I'm sure she just said that.
Who's racist?
Like small groups, such as Nagin and the press, telling us that 10,000 or more died.
Terrebonne Parish is not evacuated.
I stand corrected. Thanks for pointing out my error. Feel better?
Have a nice day.
I said it in as nice a way as I knew how. I meant no offense and am sorry if you took any.
I have been corrected many times here at FR and it doesn't bother me at all. It only starts to get irritating after having been corrected a dozen times or so because of the same mistake. People will correct without reading any more replies after seeing a mistake.
I do feel better now and I hope you do too.
Yes. I feel better. And no offense taken. I am so passionate about this Katrina subject that I post faster than I read.
Thank you, honestly.
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