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.
I'm right with you on all of it, especially the Guardsman.
That line made me laugh out loud. :) Zinggg!!
Your removal of the quote from the context of the article is "real" too.
Well the one truth I have yet to see repeated is the footage of the two female New Orleans cops wheeling shopping carts as they...umm...shopped or...umm...looted. The footage ran on one day for a short period and then was not ever shown again. One of the cops was quoted saying she was "only doing her job!"
This happened as I swear I saw the footage and heard her reply. She was scurrying along with all the others inside this store. I doubt she was doing her job and I saw an awful lot of non-food items on the shelves and in people's hands and shopping carts.
Yeesh. This was a NO cop -- someone who is supposed to uphold the law!!!!
Yes, well said, and it will be used against us to make us over react, all the way to 2008.
For example since it's our world view that we need a conservative SC judge, the MSM will try to convince us that the nominee is not -- and some will take it automatically as being legitimate.
Thank you!
This really steams me. Hearing the lamestream media 24/7 pointing their dirty fingers at GWB and Michael Brown and FEMA and meanwhile the damn first responders are *cough* shopping for free.
I watched a report on SCarborough and a photo journalist and he had taken LOTS of pictures of dead bodies around the Dome and Center. I feel certain there were more than the 5-6 that they say.
I think Nagin may be telling the truth, but now people are re-thinking helping some people.
Now I want on the record as being the first to defend the honor of our police- because most them are top notch- but NO has a problem that George Bush himself can not solve.
What you wrote is so true. I treat all people the same and I expect the same from all of them, too. I never expect less from people of color and many folks that I know personally and professionally have always appreciated that and said so. Those who aren't hoodwinked under the spell of the democrats and people like Jesse Jackson and his cohorts don't see themselves as perpetual victims and they, too, want to be treated equally as they deserve.
To expect less of a person is to think less of that person, something that the morons in the democrap party and the professional poverty leaders like Jackson and others refuse to acknowledge since it would interfere with their real agenda.
Bwahahahahahaha!
C'mon, you know the drill: the media is lying, unless what they say fits one's preconceptions.
That picture looks as if he's exhorting the crowd to thow its hands in the air and wave 'em like it just don't care.
Of the people I know- from different cultures, backgrounds and ethnic groups- I do not associate with one who would enjoy being treated as tho they needed some special help in life. None of them remind me that they look different from me- otherwise we would not be hanging out together very happily. :]
Yes, "some authority" like the NOPD or other agencies within THE STATE OF LOUISIANA. Where were they? Certainly not under president Bush's command. Lousiana is clearly the most corrupt state of dependent wimps in the entire USA, bar none. It's raining -- "WHAAAAAAA", It's blowing -- "WHAAAAAAA", It's flooding -- "WHAAAAAAA". Give us $250B -- "WHAAAAAAA".
Yes.
Exactly.
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