Free Republic

Houston could have a new crime wave in the wake of Hurricane Katrina brought in by New Orleans gangs, the FBI warned Wednesday. The FBI intelligence memo obtained by KPRC Local 2 warned other law enforcement agencies that gang member evacuees might bring an "us versus them" mentality that could lead to shootings and other violence all over Houston.On Tuesday, a group of Louisiana evacuees and students from a southeast Houston high school were involved in a fight, which escalated into a riot that closed school early. "Yesterday took away the opportunity to pretend there was no problem," said Gayle...

Vermont National Guard troops were surprised to witness up close the workings of racism in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. During the unfolding disaster, the world saw large crowds of black people, helpless, hungry, thirsty, with nowhere to go. New Orleans is a poor city with a large African-American population, and the poor had few ways of getting out of the city. Moreover, they lived in vulnerable, low-lying neighborhoods, and so it was clear that black people were suffering disproportionately from the hurricane. These are not surprising realities. Even so, it is surely an exaggeration to claim that the administration's...

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...

Think local officials are less to blame for deaths in New Orleans than federal officials? In the most jaw-dropping story of the week, UPI has the police chief of Gretna, Louisiana, admitting that he closed off one of the major arteries out of New Orleans on Monday, before the storm hit: "We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit. "All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said....