Rogers Cadenhead reports, in an article on his website:
As the situation grew steadily worse in New Orleans last week, you might have wondered why people didn't just leave on foot. The Louisiana Superdome is less than two miles from a bridge that leads over the Mississippi River out of the city.
The answer: Any crowd that tried to do so was met by suburban police, some of whom fired guns to disperse the group and seized their water.
Around 500 people stuck in downtown New Orleans after the storm banded together for self-preservation, making sure the oldest and youngest among them were taken care of before looking after their own needs.
It will be interesting to see if this three or five second image of a frail old woman being manhandled will be shown repeatedly by the media. It is so much more moving and shocking than the Howard Dean exuberance moment that the networks played so many times.
But the first story is the most horrific, for there was no interest in rescue. These subhuman police could very well have sent the escaping victims of the flood back to their deaths. Imagine being the son or grandson of a senior citizen stricken by the heat, the dehydration and seeing more police coming for you, after you've been shot at by men wearing uniforms who should be behind bars. It might make you think about protecting yourself from the police.
There are thousands of good guys- police, national guardsmen, firemen, all kinds of rescue workers with good intentions. But then there was that handful of Gretna cops who showed the world how low a person can go and gave hundreds, if not thousands of New Orleans Levee Flood victims reasons to not trust, to fear and even defend themselves from the police.
These bad apples should not just be fired. They should be tried and convicted and put in the local state prison with the general prison population. They'll find justice there. .
Here's the phone number and address for the
Gretna Police Department. Let them know what you think of them.
200 5th St
Gretna, Louisiana 70053
(504)363-1700
Bottom line" people shouldn't shoot at police. But when police go bad, it reverberates in horrible ways through society. When chaos reigns and people find themselves swirling in the grip of catastrophe, it is understandable and tragic that they respond to rescuers with fear and aggression. When the leaders of the government set examples of untrustworthiness and failure to lead, with death and destruction raining down on the innocent, then THE PEOPLE are left in an incredibly vulnerable situation, and there's no telling what desperate, vulnerable people will do in response to people wearng uniforms, when they've been shot at them before.
