Posted on 09/16/2005 5:20:30 PM PDT by BurbankKarl
Little over a week after this mostly white suburb became a symbol of callousness for using armed officers to seal one of the last escape routes from New Orleans — trapping thousands of mostly black evacuees in the flooded city — the Gretna City Council passed a resolution supporting the police chief's move.
"This wasn't just one man's decision," Mayor Ronnie C. Harris said Thursday. "The whole community backs it."
Three days after Hurricane Katrina hit, Gretna officers blocked the Mississippi River bridge that connects their city to New Orleans, exacerbating the sometimes troubled relationship with their neighbor. The blockade remained in place into the Labor Day weekend.
Gretna (pop. 17,500) is a feisty blue-collar city, two-thirds white, that prides itself on how quickly its police respond to 911 calls; it warily eyes its neighbor, a two-thirds black city (pop. about 500,000) that is also a perennial contender for the murder capital of the U.S.
Itself deprived of power, water and food for days after Katrina struck Aug. 29, Gretna suddenly became the destination for thousands of people fleeing New Orleans. The smaller town bused more than 5,000 of the newcomers to an impromptu food distribution center miles away. As New Orleans residents continued to spill into Gretna, tensions rose.
After someone set the local mall on fire Aug. 31, Gretna Police Chief Arthur S. Lawson Jr. proposed the blockade.
"I realized we couldn't continue, manpower-wise, fuel-wise," Lawson said Thursday. Armed Gretna police, helped by local sheriff's deputies and bridge police, turned hundreds of men, women and children back to New Orleans.
Gretna is not the only community that views New Orleans with distrust. Authorities in St. Bernard Parish, to the east, stacked cars to seal roads from the Crescent City.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
"After someone set the local mall on fire Aug. 31, Gretna Police Chief Arthur S. Lawson Jr. proposed the blockade" (sarcasm)
"Yeah - but one doesn't expect to get stuck because the town next door closes a public roadway"
If you're not familiar with the area in question, you don't understand why. The people in question were on high ground, there was nowhere they could evacuate to in Gretna. The ones denied access to Gretna were none the worse for being denied.
I heard some of the people who got blocked on the bridge on the radio today being interview. The chief of police in NOLA sent them to the bridge telling them that there were busses waiting there to get them out of the city. They come to the bridge and the Gretna police started firing on them.
The situation is F'ed up.
"And I agree with the notion of denying access to people who aim to enter for sightseeing or worse purposes. But ehre we are talking about letting people OUT, not letting them in. One-way traffic was the goal, yes? Get 'em all OUT!"
The people in question were on foot, on high ground and not in any danger. There was no reason to let them into Gretna
Gretna isn't a dead end -- it's one of the only ways out of New Orleans that wasn't blocked.
And they were blocking state highways.
I don't have a problem with them setting up a cordon to keep the people moving through Gretna, but forcing them to stay in flooded New Orleans was inhuman.
I am not sure what the NG could have done about it. The ideal solution would have been to station buses on the NO end of the bridge, load up the evacuees, and run them straight thru town and out again.
It is my impression that Blanco had no idea this was going on at the time, and that a certain amount of effort was expended by the authorities in Gretna to make it stay this way. If she had known, it seems unlikey that she had enough control and organization to make something like this happen. If Gretna was cut off on the west as well, it is a moot point.
Running an evacuation point WOULD be something that troops could do, driving buses, lining folks up, handing out water, food, and providing immediate medical attention, provided there were cops for any law enforcement issues.
Bottom line: Blanco failed on so many levels it is amazing. Or so it seems to me
Hmmm. [scratching chin]
Can anyone confirm this? Not that it really matters, but I'm curious.
But Gretna's decision has become the symbol of the ultimate act of a bad neighbor, gaining notoriety partly from an account in the Socialist Worker newspaper by two San Francisco emergency workers and labor leaders who were in a crowd turned back by Gretna police.
He's wrong.
Gretna is across the Mississippi River (on the west bank of the river) from New Orleans (on the east bank of the river) via the Crescent City Connection Bridge, aka GNO Bridge #2, put into service 1988. The highway over the bridge between the two cities is the Westbank Expressway.
Due to I-10 and I-12 being flooded, it was impossible to get out of the city on the east bank -- people downtown had to travel to the west bank via the Crescent City Connection to get out.
People uptown went out over the Huey P. Long Bridge, aka GNO Bridge #1.
All the news people and most of the rescuers were coming in from the west bank over those two bridges.
I know people who got out of New Orleans over these bridges, but they're white. Which might something to do with it.
The Gretna City Council endorsed the actions of the Gretna Police -- what more confirmation do you need that it actually happened?
Would they endorse something that never happened?
On O'Reilly last night, Col David Hunt was on to discuss what really happened in NO during the looting. He reported that there were organized gangs that came in with AK47s, M16s, boats, etc from as far away as Memphis, Dallas, etc. who undertook an organized, systematic looting of the city. Soldiers reported NO became a "free fire" zone at night and was as bad as "Baghdad on a bad night."
I am sure the police of the surrounding communities knew what was happening and did what they had to do to prevent their towns from being taken over by these armed gangs.
I forgot to mention that these gangs were fighting over control of sections of the city. Hunt reported that some of the NO police officers took part and/or bribes from these gangs.
I was leaning in that direction as well. Any student of military strategy knows that bridges are, by definition, "funnels." To suggest that one is not an evacuation route beggars belief. I was simply curious if this bridge was a "bridge to nowhere," so to speak.
The map at this link:
http://www.mapper.cctechnol.com/floodmap.php
show Gretna. What seems to have happened is that the GNO bridge which goes from New Orleans to New Orleans, ie the central business district to Algers actually goes through Jefferson Parish and thus the Gretna/Jefferson Parish authorities blocked it. US Highway 90 is on what they call the West bank but is really South of New Orleans. It goes through swampland to Lafayette. I can not believe it was passable. I lived in New Orleans for two years and never went west that way.
Apparently people were attempting to walk and maybe drive across the bridge. Once into Gretna they could disperse into their evacuated community. My guess is if there had been controlled evacuation by NO using buses, etc such that the evacuees were not turned loose in Gretna or the surrounding areas then nothing would have been blocked. JMO.
Since I-10, I-12, the Causeway, and the Airline Highway were under water, just how *would* you get out?
It wasn't the best way, but it was the only highway out of town.
That, or walk on the levee to Harahan.
No, it isn't there job to stop ANYBODY from coming in. It is always law enforcements job to protect life and what they did was reject people fleeing an oncoming hurricane.
I think the law enforcement of Gretna, at least the decision makers, should be looked at to see if they violated any laws by denying safe haven to evacuees. They put the safety of structure above the safety of human life.
"Yeah - but one doesn't expect to get stuck because the town next door closes a public roadway"
Anthrax/Smallpox scares in 2001 inspired me to map out an escape route from my city to a relative's safe house 50 miles into the rural country without passing through any towns.
From that point there's another route I mapped to a secondary location 200 miles further out.
I bought the county road atlas for my state which shows topography as well as roads. I've even got contingency routes for doing the trip on foot if need be.
Three years ago we could have left on this trip with one hour's notice, either by vehicle or food. It would take me a day or so to get everything together now.
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