Posted on 09/27/2005 11:36:58 AM PDT by andyk
NEW ORLEANS
On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten."
Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."
The ugliest reports _ children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement _ soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans.
The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution.
But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact.
They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered.
One of those victims _ found at the Superdome _ appears to have been killed elsewhere before being brought to the stadium, said Bob Johannessen, the agency spokesman.
"It was a chaotic time for the city. Now that we've had a chance to reflect back on that situation, we're able to say right now that things were not the way they appeared," said police Capt. Marlon Defillo.
Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said.
To be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees. Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The elderly and very young were desperate for food, water and medicine.
Police said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center, and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when an evacuee tried to take his gun.
A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.
Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention center were overblown. He was head of security at the Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen who went in to secure the center on Sept. 2.
"The incidents were highly exaggerated" _ the result of fear and hopelessness, he said. "For the amount of the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment."
Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape.
Bill Waldron, a homicide detective from Florida in New Orleans for a murder trial, was stuck in the convention center until Sept. 1. He said he saw a couple of fights between young men, but "no murders, no rapes." He said that he did see people dying, but that those deaths were most likely a result of the heat and lack of water.
"People were wanting just some type of authority to come in and say, `Hey, this is what's going to happen,'" Waldron said. "People were scared."
New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion of attempted sexual assault but received no official reports of rape.
Judy Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation sites. Because the evacuees and any perpetrators have been scattered across the country by Katrina, and now Hurricane Rita, victims may come forward later, she said.
"It is extremely difficult to get good statistics about rape under normal circumstances, and these are certainly not normal circumstances," she said.
Bill Ellis, a folklorist at Pennsylvania State University, said rumors in an environment like that at the evacuation centers are to be expected, given the frightening circumstances and paucity of authoritative information.
"Rumors become improvised news. You become your own anchorman," he said.
The chaos also seemed to affect some reporters and editors, said Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists at the Poynter Institute, a journalism research and education center in St. Petersburg, Fla.
"You get so hung up as a reporter on what the big picture is that you use generalizations that become untrue," McBride said.
Oh please. It's the truth. Otherwise, why would you ask me such an insipid question? What does it matter because you're going to tell everyone who you've been through the riots,etc. and everyone else is wrong. LOL as for running off no one runs me off. I also don't need Clownposse, not now and not ever just like I don't need any other anti-freeping site. I'm not rdb3 and have no interest in posting at CP EVER. Believe whatever you want as to my posting habits.
No, I do not think that, really. Some Freepers bought into the mentality that all black folks on the overpass and in the super dome were thugs, criminals, on welfare or too lazy to evacuate. Actually, I think Shep and Geraldo did a great service to these folks by pointing out their plight in many days of hell.
Thread crumbs hit the spot-thanks. ;]
"A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, an Arkansas National Guardsman told The Times-Picayune of New Orleans that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut."
When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found.
Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said reports of violence at the Superdome and the convention center were overblown. He was head of security at the Superdome and led the 1,000 military police and infantrymen who went in to secure the center on Sept. 2.
"The incidents were highly exaggerated" _ the result of fear and hopelessness, he said. "For the amount of the people in the situation, it was a very stable environment."
Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape."
What do you think the odds are of finding the Arkansas National Guardsman and hearing what he has to say? The whole story, from first to last (this) makes me think there's something rotten in Denmark.
But since I don't agree with you and have a different view of things than you and the people with whom you associate -you want to insult me and insinuate that I am a racist- a bigot...what???.
BTW-I didn't post that you posted at CP. If you all would pay attention to what you read when it is posted to you, may not get into these arguments over nothing.
Bingo!
Where did I do that? When did I insult you and accuse you of being a racist? That was rdb3 NOT ME. BTW, I can read. If you post to me, I assume you're addressing me and you implied that I posted at CP. If that wasn't your intention then why address me and CP in the same post? I did say that your question has nothing to do with this thread topic which it doesn't.
So now you are insulting me and running off again?? Don't worry someone over at Clownposse will cut and paste it for you so you can read it there. I like how you are using all of their buzz words now. Y'all got quite a tight group don't you?
*** BTW, I've never been part of any tight group so I don't know what you're talking about. Have a nice evening.
We don't know they're not lying now.
I believe that some are clearly racist. And some are just gullible - like me - as I clean the egg of my face. :(
i'm 47 and 6th generation Mississippian so white on black racism is nothing new to me....
But while that has gone down markedly in my view during my lifetime, the rise of black resentment and contempt for whites (and others actually) has been a disappointment.
and I really don't see much fixing that........white guilt sure won't....no matter how good it makes those folks feel about themselves.
that said....I think evryone is racist a bit.....either out and out, or passive, or defensive (me), or paternalistic (that would be the mushy guilty white folk)
it's a damned mess......the issues that arose from Katrina were nothing new...it's just the scope and the 24 hour news channels went on and on and on.
if that was the first time folks saw black hostility to whites and it startled them then they must live pretty isolated.
as for all the white on black racist aspects...I blame Bush of course..lol
I had hoped this could open eyes and maybe fix some stuff that needs fixin but it's back to business as usual.
Four days after the storm, thousands of blacks in New Orleans are dying like dogs. No-one has come to help them.
uhhh...lets see. start walking North or West. I'm sure a local Git-n-Go could be an hour outside of the punchbowl of hell. Imagine that, "survival."
True. And I'm going to have to be more careful about what I believe. A wait and see attitude in situations like this is definitely the wise path to take.
We do have our share of idiots here. I wish that were not the case.
People who are really racist are of one culture and - yes there are people who are not racist and they are of another culture.
I don't believe that everyone is a degree of racist. Not my friends anyway- and be careful to think that my friends are one color please. :]
Of course the media was exaggerating data and numbers- I mean tens of thousands of dead? No way.
Why don't they find the National Guardsman and interview him. So are we to believe that he was lying? Ummm.. I am not going to fall for that one so easily.
"Kelly McBride, who teaches ethics to journalists at the Poynter Institute,"
That is like an Eskimo teaching Russian to a rattlesnake!
Many freepers here are not racists, but certainly vulnerable to to MSM and Cable reports. So many did not allow for the fact of so many reporting to the super dome after they had pulled many victims from the rising waters, or that they had pushed their elderly relatives on floating rafts, or that they had shared their provisions with others in compassion. But, of course, they should be forever banished from their city because they are only riff raff, after all, and will choose to relocate. I think not.
Grrrr...this is getting on my nerves. When I see LA, as in your post, I know it California. Louisiana is La.....LOL
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