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| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Guard to pull out of New Orleans after 3 1/2 years |
| 2009-02-28 |
| US OUT OF NEW ORLEANS!!! NEW ORLEANS -- Three and a half years after Hurricane Katrina, the National Guard is pulling the last of its troops out of New Orleans this weekend, leaving behind a city still desperate and dangerous. Residents long distrustful of the city's police force are worried they will have to fend for themselves. Sorry, folks. It's a quagmire. Gotta go... "I don't know if crime will go up after these guys leave. But I know a lot more of us will be packing our own pieces now to make sure we're protected," said Calvin Stewart, owner of a restaurant and store. Looks like Calvin's ready. Calvin doesn't strike me as a Walther PPK type ... New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley said his rebuilt police department is up to the job of protecting the city. "I think we're ready to handle things," he said. Yeah, upholding the proud history of the NOPD... The National Guardsmen were welcomed as liberators when they arrived in force in a big convoy more than four days after Katrina struck New Orleans in August 2005 and plunged the city into anarchy. The force was eventually 15,000 strong. The last of the troops were removed in January 2006 as civil authority returned, but then, after a surge in bloodshed, 360 were sent back in beginning in mid-2006 to help police keep order. As of February, only about 100 troops were left in the city. Was this New Orleans or Baghdad? With Louisiana facing a $341 million budget deficit, state lawmakers were reluctant to keep the Guard in place any longer. The Guard was used to patrol the less populated sections of the city where Katrina's floodwaters left most houses uninhabitable. That included the woeful Ninth Ward, where renovated houses are outnumbered by moldy, boarded-up wrecks and weed-choked vacant lots. In their camouflage uniforms and Humvees, the troops were often a welcome sight. "We don't have enough cops. It's not that they're bad, it's just that there's not enough of them. These guys are Johnny-on-the-spot when you need them," said 57-year-old Tom Hightower, who is still trying to get the mold out of his house. He added: "This is still a spooky place after dark." The troops had full arrest powers but were required to call New Orleans police on serious matters. In their time on the streets, Guard troops were involved in only one shooting, and the district attorney ruled it justified. The Guardsmen answered lots of calls involving domestic violence, reported to be up in New Orleans since the hurricane, and handled car wrecks, house and business alarms and other problems. "One of the biggest things we did was keep those places safe so people could rebuild," said Sgt. Wayne Lewis, a New Orleans native who has been patrolling the streets since January 2007. "People would put the things to rebuild in their houses and thieves would come along and take them right out again. We stopped a lot of that." New Orleans had 210 murders in 2007, making it the murder capital of America, with the highest per-capita rate in the country. That number dropped to 179 in 2008. Nevertheless, "crime continues to be this community's No. 1 concern. Even with the lower numbers it is still unacceptably high," said Rafael Goyeneche, executive director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission. Before the hurricane, the police force had more than 1,600 officers. But its ranks were reduced after the storm by more than 30 percent because of desertions, dismissals, retirements and suicides. (New Orleans has only about 70 percent of its pre-Katrina population of 455,000.) The department has climbed back up to about 1,500 officers, and hopes to add by the end of April more than two dozen Guardsmen who liked the work so much they signed on. The Guard was supposed to leave on Jan. 1, but Louisiana lawmakers approved funding to keep 100 troops through February to give the police more time to recruit officers. The Guard's departure, which will take place after the final patrol ends at 3 a.m. Sunday, will be low-key. There will be no convoy, no bands playing. The last few Guardsmen on the street will check in their vehicles and head home for good. "I don't think the city is ready for us to leave," said Lt. Ronald Brown, who has been part of Task Force Gator since April 2007. "I'd like to see us stay. I think we make a difference, but I guess it's a money thing." |
| Posted by:tu3031 |
| #15 Old Patriot, the zoo is great, and considerably better than it ever was 45 years ago (can't say it's quite back to pre-Katrina, but it wasn't really damaged much, so any minimal decline would likely be due to volunteer & funding limits.) And yes, a lot of New Orleanians left for good. Unfortunately for New Orleans I think they were disproportionately the more desirable residents. But too many good jobs left, so the good workers had to leave too. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-02-28 19:55 |
| #14 Surprisingly enough, a fairly large percentage of the former residents of New Orleans don't plan to go home. I don't know if it's 25% or 30%, but those numbers are very close. That includes a LOT of people that relocated to Denver, Omaha, NE, Saint Louis, MO, Tulsa, OK, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and even some that moved as far away (more climate-wise than distance) to El Paso, Texas. I've been to New Orleans many times. The school sponsored trips down there to see the port, the zoo (which was first-rate 45 years ago - don't know what it's like now), Tulane University, and other sites. That's where the MEPS station was when I first enlisted in the Air Force. A friend of mine's father founded the New Orleans Baptist Seminary there, and I visited several times. I shipped a car from New Orleans to Germany. I've never lived there, but New Orleans was a typical big city, with big-city crime problems, made worse by being the third largest port area in the US, and having a history of rampant corruption. It hasn't changed just because a hurricane destroyed half of it. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2009-02-28 18:08 |
| #13 i agree with old spook it was a shit hole and i called what would happen after Katrina, they migrated too such places as atlanta and continiued what they do best. sell crack and commit crimes |
| Posted by: rabid whitetail 2009-02-28 16:59 |
| #12 .5mt you are fucking stupid with that remark - or else you forgot to switch to one of your other sockpuppet names you asshole. Who said anything about killing peopel, you drooling jerk? I advocated simply letting a horribly damaged area be cleard and relocate the people *with aid* to a better place with better homes. And you, like the room temperature IQ you are, decided to equate that with decimation? How stupid ARE you to think that can slip by? Did you ever consider I did missionary work there in the 9th ward, so I *KNOW* the area, personally? Did you ever consider I have friend in the Guard who told me how it was post-Katrina down there? By God, that part of New Orleans is as bad as some parts of Haiti I saw in the Army, and thats BEFORE the hurricane. And its not just me - my younger brother was there as well for missionary work for a lot longer. So .5IQ, you wanna apologize for being a shit-for-brains and restract that bullshit of yours? |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-02-28 16:39 |
| #11 I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure... |
| Posted by: Sgt. Hicks 2009-02-28 16:39 |
| #10 I'd have shortened the effective levee lengths by shifting pumping to the mouths of the canals, which is sort of what they have done. I'd have concentrated on rebuilding upriver of the Industrial Canal, and on strenghthening the protections of those areas. I would have sacrificed New Orleans East and St. Bernard (& Lower 9th Ward) and offered buyouts for all those properties instead of spending money rebuilding (and I'd have tended to base the buyout offers on their tax assessment valuation.) |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-02-28 15:26 |
| #9 Here's a map of the New Orleans levee system showing where the Katrina breaches occurred and where the flooding occurred. Which levees would you breach? Which areas of the city would "reflood"? |
| Posted by: Matt 2009-02-28 12:04 |
| #8 Some things are pretty obvious, .5MT ... |
| Posted by: Steve White 2009-02-28 11:39 |
| #7 "We don't have enough cops…” No…you have too many bad guys, corrupt government officials, and race baiting activists. |
| Posted by: DepotGuy 2009-02-28 10:45 |
| #6 Shortly after Katrina a number of planners and politicians advocated something very similar to Old Spook's proposal. It would have cost far less to rebuild, to protect in the future, and to rebuild again in the future when that protection fails. But people felt they had a RIGHT to go home and demagogic politicians fanned flames of racism around the issue, and of course governments at all levels saw it as a way to get their hands on a bigger pot of money to play with, so ..... here we are. Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it - hold on to your wallet, if there's anything left in it. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2009-02-28 10:27 |
| #5 ..maybe because, in the end, we all ended up paying for it. It's the standard operating procedure now for government to ignore the warnings and when the problem blows up on them, it's expected everyone else has to bail them out. Then they turn around and repeat the same stupid behavior again. Since we can't stop it, we just bitch. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-02-28 07:36 |
| #4 Ever notice how everyones a damn expert about New Orleans? |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-02-28 01:28 |
| #3 And kill every 3rd person in Colorodo to protect what ever shitass thing I don't like about Denver. Yeah, I know..... we all hate it, so it's okay. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-02-28 01:27 |
| #2 Even if they didn't re-flood them, bulldoze those sunken neighborhoods and turn them into parks, etc. Put some green space in there. The rest done as you say. |
| Posted by: Steve White 2009-02-28 01:23 |
| #1 They should never have rebuilt it. Those parts of NO were a shit-hole anyway, a warren of generations of poverty and laziness and government dependency. They should have just bulldozed some of those wards, then opened the levees to reflood the wetlands, and use the rebuild money to build new neighborhoods on the higher ground to the N, with proper hurricane proofed structures, a better city layout, proper policing, and mass transit into the city for jobs. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-02-28 00:55 |