Police Blocked Civilians From Escaping New Orleans On Foot

[jyl]

When crowds of people tried to flee New Orleans on foot after the flooding, police stopped them at gunpoint/gunshot and ordered them back into the flooded city. Techweenie pointed this out in another thread, then it got discussed in yet another, but some people said the story was fabricated because it was first reported in second-tier (or worse) media sources. Now it's been reported in the New York Times and the key point confirmed with the relevant police department. So I think it deserves its own thread.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/10/national/nationalspecial/10emt.html

"Police agencies to the south of New Orleans were so fearful of the crowds trying to leave the city after Hurricane Katrina that they sealed a crucial bridge over the Mississippi River and turned back hundreds of desperate evacuees, two paramedics who were in the crowd said.

The paramedics and two other witnesses said officers sometimes shot guns over the heads of fleeing people, who, instead of complying immediately with orders to leave the bridge, pleaded to be let through, the paramedics and two other witnesses said. The witnesses said they had been told by the New Orleans police to cross that same bridge because buses were waiting for them there.

Instead, a suburban police officer angrily ordered about 200 people to abandon an encampment between the highways near the bridge. The officer then confiscated their food and water, the four witnesses said. The incidents took place in the first days after the storm last week, they said.

"The police kept saying, 'We don't want another Superdome,' and 'This isn't New Orleans,' " said Larry Bradshaw, a San Francisco paramedic who was among those fleeing.

Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna, La., Police Department, confirmed that his officers, along with those from the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office and the Crescent City Connection Police, sealed the bridge.

"There was no place for them to come on our side," Mr. Lawson said.

He said that he had been asked by reporters about officers threatening victims with guns or shooting over their heads, but he said that he had not yet asked his officers about that.

"As soon as things calm down, we will do an inquiry and find out what happened," he said.

The lawlessness that erupted in New Orleans soon after the hurricane terrified officials throughout Louisiana, and even a week later, law enforcement officers rarely entered the city without heavy weaponry.

While police officers saved countless lives and provided security to medical providers, many victims have complained bitterly about the behavior of some of the police officers in New Orleans in the days following Hurricane Katrina.

Officials in Lafayette, La., reported seeing scores of cruisers from the New Orleans police department in their city in the week after the hurricane. Some evacuees who fled to the Superdome and the convention center say that many police officers refused to patrol those structures after dark.

"It's unbelievable what the police officers did; they just left us," said Harold Veasey, a 66-year-old New Orleans resident who spent two horrific days at the convention center. And in the week after the hurricane, there were persistent rumors in and around New Orleans that police officers in suburban areas refused to help the storm victims.

Mr. Bradshaw and his partner, Lorrie Beth Slonsky, wrote an account about their experiences that has been widely circulated by e-mail and was first printed in The Socialist Worker.

Cathey Golden, a 51-year-old from Boston, and her 13-year-old son, Ramon Golden, yesterday confirmed the account.

The four met at the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter. Mr. Bradshaw and Ms. Slonsky had attended a convention for emergency medicine specialists. Ms. Golden and her two children, including 23-year-old Rashida Golden, were there to visit family.

The hotel allowed its guests and nearly 250 residents from the nearby neighborhood to stay until Thursday, Sept 1. With its food exhausted, the hotel's manager finally instructed people to leave. Hotel staff handed out maps to show the way to the city's convention center, to which thousands of other evacuees had fled.

A group of nearly 200 guests gathered to make their way to the center together, the four said. But on the way, they heard that the convention center had become a dangerous, unsanitary pit from which no one was being evacuated. So they stopped in front of a New Orleans police command post near the Harrah's casino on Canal Street.

A New Orleans police commander whom none of the four could identify told the crowd that they could not stay there and later told them that buses were being brought to the Crescent City Connection, a nearby bridge to Jefferson Parish, to carry them to safety.

The crowd cheered and began to move. Suspicious, Mr. Bradshaw said that he asked the commander if he was sure that buses would be there for them. "We'd had so much misinformation by that point," Mr. Bradshaw said.

"He looked all of us in the eye and said, 'I swear to you, there are buses waiting across the bridge,' " Mr. Bradshaw said.

But on the bridge there were four police cruisers parked across some lanes. Between six and eight officers stood with shotguns in their hands, the witnesses said. As the crowd approached, the officers shot over the heads of the crowd, most of whom retreated immediately, Mr. Bradshaw, Ms. Slonsky and Ms. Golden and her son said.

Mr. Bradshaw said the officers were allowing cars to cross the bridge, some of them loaded with passengers. Only pedestrians were being stopped, he said. Chief Lawson said he believed that only emergency vehicles were allowed through.

Mr. Bradshaw said he approached the officers and begged to be allowed through, saying a commander in New Orleans had told them buses were waiting for them on the other side.

"He said that there are no buses and that there is no foot traffic allowed across the bridge," Mr. Bradshaw said.

The remaining evacuees first sought refuge under a nearby highway overpass and then trudged back to New Orleans."

In addition to the paramedics' account, similar experiences have been reported by other people trying to escape flooded New Orleans.

[competentone]

Originally posted by jyl
When crowds of people tried to flee New Orleans on foot after the flooding, police stopped them at gunpoint/gunshot and ordered them back into the flooded city. Techweenie pointed this out in another thread, then it got discussed in yet another, but some people said the story was fabricated because it was first reported in second-tier (or worse) media sources. Now it's been reported in the New York Times and the key point confirmed with the relevant police department. So I think it deserves its own thread.

I like the way you use the term "second-tier (or worse) media sources"! Why don't you just come out and say that the "story" was from the "Socialist Worker"? The article itself isn't afraid to say it. (Of course, for the NY Times, the "Socialist Worker" is probably considered to be a reliable source.)

Other sources (posted on the other thread) showed that the facts of the case appeared to be quite different than the way they were portrayed in the Socialist Worker article. The police had fired warning shots when certain crowds had become hostile.

As I said before (in the other thread), I'm not opposed to condemning bad police behavior; I just don't want to jump on the bandwagon of someone with an agenda who is twisting facts to suit their goals. I also am not opposed to the police doing their job of protecting the communities they have taken an oath to protect. They have a responsibility to defend their communities against having mobs of people (hoodlums?) wander around their city.

[techweenie]

I grabbed the original post because someone had forwarded it to me as a blind item and I googled it to the Socialist Worker.

There are two things to say about that:

1. There is corroboration from other EMTs on a non-political EMT site.

2. AFAIK, the key motivation for the "Socialist Worker" would be to absolve local authorities and blame the Bush administration. So the thrust of the article seemed credible -- despite the source.

[Mulhollanddose]

The Louisiana Department of Homeland Security, that is the state agency responsible for that state's homeland security, told the Red Cross explicitly, you cannot come.

Major problems in the socialist hellhole of New Orleans...Blanco and Nagin won't let them leave and didn't want them to stay (at the Superdome)...Now that is what I call mismanagment on a criminal scale.

[skipdup]

I keep waiting for someone to turn this into a Bush, conservative or racial issue. Then, I can really get involved in this thread. j/k

Seriously... If this happened like it sounds... I can not fathom the suffering these people endured, along with the rest of NO's population. I literally can not allow myself to wander very far into this in my mind... it breaks my heart. You would never expect "officials" to prolong or add to your suffering. Even if somehow you found out it was for the greater good (and I have no idea with the case), that would be of no consolation at the time.

- Skip

[jyl]

Originally posted by competentone
[snip]Other sources (posted on the other thread) showed that the facts of the case appeared to be quite different than the way they were portrayed in the Socialist Worker article. The police had fired warning shots when certain crowds had become hostile.

As I said before (in the other thread), I'm not opposed to condemning bad police behavior; I just don't want to jump on the bandwagon of someone with an agenda who is twisting facts to suit their goals. [snip]

You insisted that the initial report by the paramedics was all fabricated. Then when similar stories by overseas tourists were reported, you insisted those reports were unreliable because they were from non-US media. Then when a US media source (Associated Press) reported these incidents, you still denied them. Now that the New York Times has reported this, including the police chief's confirmation that his officers were sealing off New Orleans and preventing people from escaping the flooded city, you're still in denial.

[competentone]

Originally posted by jyl
You insisted that the initial report by the paramedics was all fabricated. Then when similar stories by overseas tourists were reported, you insisted those reports were unreliable because they were from non-US media. Then when a US media source (Associated Press) reported these incidents, you still denied them. Now that the New York Times has reported this, including the police chief's confirmation that his officers were sealing off New Orleans and preventing people from escaping the flooded city, you're still in denial.

You need to work on your reading comprehension skills.

[Mulhollanddose]

Of course not SoCal...if they were surely the media would highlight it and objectively cover these facts...Just like the "anti-war" movement - if they were truly just a communist front, like some like myself say they are, naturally the media in all their holy righteousness would do an exposee on them.

[skipdup]

Originally posted by SoCal911SC
isn't pretty much everything in NO corrupt and incompetent, from the mayor, to the police department, etc. etc. etc.?

Yes. A long time friend of mine was an assistant DA in Orleans parish trying capital crimes. Everything is corrupt there. I don't know that I would say everything/one is incompetent, but definitely corrupt.