Posted on 09/19/2005 7:41:43 AM PDT by SmithL
NEW ORLEANS - It was like a modern-day treasure map - a computerized diagram of neighborhoods with codes marking the addresses where National Guard soldiers came upon caches of goods taken by looters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
"There's probably still loot out there" hidden in various homes, Capt. Gregg McGowan said from his Oklahoma National Guard unit's makeshift headquarters.
"We're not going house-to-house looking for it, but if we find it, we secure it so police can check it."
In the chaos that followed Katrina's flooding, looters targeted everything from grocery stores to gun shops to trendy women's clothing boutiques. Now that the city is mostly empty of civilians, military patrols making house-to-house checks for remaining residents or the dead are finding some of the hiding places for the stolen goods.
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said he intends to prosecute as many looters as he can. However, few arrests have been made thus far because authorities have been primarily concerned with reaching stranded residents, Jordan said.
The guardsmen recently thought they had caught a looter coming back into town to load his stash onto a moving truck. Inside his home, the soldiers found automobile parts stacked 8 feet high, a new off-road motorcycle and various electronics, including a video game system with a pawn shop ticket still attached.
But the man told the soldiers he had no idea where the goods came from and that someone else must have broken into his home and stashed them there after he evacuated. Skeptical, the soldiers detained him until police arrived, filled out a report and seized the goods. They took the man's name and address, but did not arrest him.
"You could be technical and say, 'I'm going to book him with possession of stolen property,' but then you have to find out who the owner is, find out whether that person had permission take that property," New Orleans Police Capt. Marlon Defillo said.
"So what we're generally doing is seizing the goods as found property and writing a report."
That way, he explained, authorities can return the goods if they figure out where they came from - rather than holding them as evidence pending the resolution of often drawn-out criminal cases.
In other homes, McGowan's unit found automatic teller machines that had been broken open and emptied of cash and bags of ammunition still packaged in 500-round bundles, not the individual boxes of 20 rounds usually sold over the counter.
A smashed-open video poker machine, likely taken from a bar, was left lying on the sidewalk of an Uptown residential street.
In a church-run assisted living home close to a heavily looted Wal-Mart in the lower Garden District, a team of guardsmen found new bicycles, stereos and clothing. Someone associated with the church, who refused to give his name, said at least seven rooms in the four-story residence were filled with goods believed to be stolen.
New Orleans police are storing seized loot in a makeshift warehouse near the city's train station, Defillo said. He declined to provide details on how many goods had been found, how many businesses or homes had been looted, or if authorities had any long-term plan to track down some of the culprits.
"We haven't even had time to deal with that yet," he said.
Did they ever catch the White House looters of 2000?
Exactly, with any halfway decent lawyer, none of these people could ever be convicted of ANYTHING.
You have houses being entered without warrants.
You have searches being done by non-law enforcement officers.
You have loot of untraceable origin.
You have homes that are forcibly abandoned.
You have extensive evidence of people entering and squatting in neighboring homes and buildings.
Any reasonable lawyers defense would read something like this, "Your honor, what really happened here is OBVIOUS. The original looter, whoever he was, must have discovered his own home flooded and took refuge in my clients home. When the looter faced starvation, he evacuated the city and left his loot behind".
Your job, as the prosecutor, is to prove that assertion FALSE. Good luck!
Of course, the looters we have on video will be MUCH easier to prosecute...if we can identify them. There's a big legal difference between having unidentified stolen goods show up on your abandoned property, and having video evidence of you actively stealing from closed businesses.
And now someone can be prosecuted for theft, hopefully!
Ah man, now you've gone and ruined a perfectly good thread (with the makings of a great flame war) with common sense and reason.
I didn't know that ATMs were filled with bags of ammunition.
Well, you've never broken into one, have you?
Yep, looks like your basic survival needs to me /sarc.
LOL! Maybe not PC enough -- what about undocumented shoppers?
Yeah, those plasma TVs taste pretty good with a little garlic and pepper.
Prior to the declared martial law and mandatory evacuation order nothing found without a search warrant is admissible.
and you live in that house,
Once the Mayor declared martial law and ordered mandatory evacuation he also assumed legal control and responsibility for those homes.
The property owner / renter has been relieved of their control and their responsibility.
your going to get convicted and be jailed
Sure a jury of their peers will convict fellow looters
regardless if your finger prints are on the goods or not.
NOPD won't bother. They will instead auction off the confiscated stolen unclaimed property (there'll be a private in-house auction first.)
Walmart etc, will be paid for the stuff by their insurance company so they have no motive to go after their stolen property.
Insurance pay outs will be passed on nationwide as higher costs.
Yes, unlikely and far fetched. But I will agree, in this specific event in NO, some may be able to get away with it, and probably will, and they can always ask for the search warrant, which there will be none.
However, the fact seems to remain that many of the looters never left NO, and stayed behind where they lived. So it would seem, the largest stashes of looted goods have not been found yet, since there would be no need to search a home that is already occupied.
Agree, but again, I understand most of the looters never left, and remained where they lived. From what I have read, thousands remained behind, and refused to leave. No need to search an occupied dwelling. That's why I said, the majority of the loot, has no doubt not been located. Probably never will.
Now I know some will say every single person in the region was forced to leave, but I would very much doubt that occurred. But you are correct about the warrants.
What?!? We're being told there was no looting, or at least that it was greatly exaggerated:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1485315/posts
Good point. And so true.
Ah, yes, these halfway houses for criminals ... another liberal idea that doesn't work, enables crime and cost a fortune.
I never thought of that. You're probably right.
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