Kevin called me because he thought I would be outraged by the mayor promising vacations to the New Orleans first responders as he and Jay were. Sorry guys, with all due respect, you don’t get it….
And I’ll add that in general about 85% of what you hear on blogs and cable news is wrong is some way. Let me explain. There is one name that probably prompted this… Paul Accardo.
Sgt. Accadro was the department spokesman and in a job where it is easy to be universally hated he was near universally liked and respected. Details are still sketchy but from what we can tell after seeing the death and destruction of his city, he came home to find his entire family had drowned during the levee break. (that’s probably about 85% confirmed) What we do know is what happened next. Sgt. Accardo, (along with another officer this week) took his own life.
His death reverberated thru the city and especially the police force instantly. The New Orleans police have been to hell. Literally. We had about 2 days less warning than we usually have for a hurricane. One minute we were leading our lives and in what seemed like no time we trying to save our lives. These gentlemen (and ladies) have witnessed horrors the rest of us can not even fathom in our worst nightmares.
At present, the NOPD is growing irrelevant. The national guard has armed choppers flying over the city 24/7. Anyone caught looting will be killed from above. Period.
The town is flooded and largely abandoned. There is nothing to patrol. These guys need to leave. They need to sit in a hotel room and cry for a few days.
In a few weeks, when the water gets pumped out, these guys will be called on to do a job that few of us want to do. They’ll be retrieving corpses that are weeks old… Some of the corpses will be their friends. They’ll be fighting to keep order in a town where there is none. Their horror is only beginning.
Do I begrudge them a few days off while the water is pumped out? Hell no.
I just hope it is enough to keep them sane when they have every right to go stalk raving mad.
Update I should have added one important thing… New Orleans has a residency requirement. Admittedly many officers cheat and live outside the parish (county) but in general all of these folks lost their homes and all their possessions this week too. Think about it.
Hey, Davebo.
I wasn’t speculating, I was quoting from what his boss thinks, in the link to the story of his suicide linked above my posting.
Please read it and tell me how I’m wrong here.
The people who were left in NO were there mainly because the Mayor didn’t implement the evacuation plan, and what plan he did implement, started 24 hours later than it could have.
The buses to be used in the written plan would have made all the difference in the world, along with an agressive, early, definitive declaration to get out.
I can’t take this. I am from New Orleans. I am no longer there. I am headed back tomorrow to begin putting the city back together (I work for the mayor). Paul Accardo was my friend.
Anyone with the balls to say the NOPD performed abysmally deserves a swift smack in the head. This is an incredibly underfunded department that has been rife with corruption and grift. NO department ever has been asked to do what they did…some did better than others, but holding the city together (or as much as it could be with a force of 1200 to 1400 officers) while not knowing where your family is and knowing that your home and all of your earthly possessions are under 12 feet of water is something I doubt any of the people in this thread could do…including me.
This is not 9/11…there was still food, water, routes in and out, an IMMEDIATE military response, homes and stations to go back to…power, light, and a tangible enemy.
Paul was going through a divorce and I can only imagine seeing and dealing with what he did simply overwhelemed him…I always wondered if he had the temperment to be a cop. I hope he has found peace.
Finally….We will rebuild New Orleans better than ever and anyone who wants to snipe from afar at this situation can continue to do so, but please pucker up and prepare to kiss my rosy new orleans ass.
Here goes with the $%@# buses again. Get this straight: THE MAYOR DID NOT HAVE THOSE FREAKIN’ BUSES! FEMA DID! Yes, that’s right, FEMA, the organization that can’t shoot straight. The Orleans Parish School Board is *NOT* under the Mayors jurisdiction. The Mayor’s office does NOT know where the bus yards are, or where the drivers for the buses live. FEMA knew, though, because the OPSB *TOLD THEM*.
I’ve probably lived through a half dozen hurricanes in Louisiana over the past 20 years (including one direct strike where the eyewall went over me which, thank god, was only a Category 1). In all of them FEMA came in, and coordinated the various resources. That’s their job. Everybody registered their resources with FEMA, then their needs. Then FEMA matched up resources with needs, e.g. if the School Board says that it has 1200 buses, and Nagin says he needs 1200 buses, then FEMA tells the school board to send 1200 buses to Nagin and Nagin has his buses. It worked. It worked for every single one of those hurricanes. Until this one. When the process apparently completely broke down.
And the funny part of all this is that Nagin is a *REPUBLICAN*. He was a successful business executive, he was George W. Bush’s campaign manager for the New Orleans area, he was a Republican for 20 years until his polling indicated he would get an extra 5% of the black vote if he switched to the Democratic Party. Which he did three weeks before the election (Louisiana elections are non-partisan so you can do that). But he was *STILL* George W. Bush’s campaign manager in 2004, when he was supposedly “officially” a Democrat. All this stuff about “he’s a Democrat, of course he’s incompetent” is ludicrous… he’s about as much a Democrat as George W. Bush.
Sorry about the ranting, I just get SO tired of seeing this kind of misinformation bandied about as fact. Nagin and Blanco should rightly be criticized for holding off on declaring the mandatory evacuation until it was too late to activate the final phase of the evacuation plan (the bus phase for those without cars). By the time the cars cleared the roads enough for buses to use them, the hurricane was almost upon New Orleans, meaning the buses would have been useless even if Nagin had known about them, which he didn’t. But let’s quit spinning and get real here. Sheesh.
Peter, my condolences on the loss of your friend. I certainly was not aware of an ongoing divorce, and would not diss anyone going thru both a hurricane and a personal hell.
The comments got a little off track from the original issue–paid Vegas vacations for NOPD. Some commenters believe this expediture to be poor PR, and terrible timing. Those comments don’t involve Sgt. Accardo specifically, but the wisdom of the concept.
You concede the NOPD is underfunded and rife with corruption and graft. You go even further when discussing Sgt. Accardo, mentioning that you questioned his temperament to be a cop. But Peter, he was a police sergeant acting as a N’Awlins dept. spokesman for the very mayor you work for, not a line officer out in the flood. And his family apparantly was safe. How does that info relate to the paid-vacation point, pray tell?
How is it disrespectful to your friend when it’s noted that a significant portion of NOPD just melted away? That officers participated actively in looting? That others abandoned their posts?
Of course they felt abandoned and outgunned. Of course they were asked to do a lot, maybe more than they should be expected to do. That’s the point. You can’t have it both ways. Either you man a post, or you bail. One option deserves praise and reward, the other does not.
Your point about 9/11 is well taken, but here’s a larger picture for your consideration. Whatever the disaster–fire, flood, Mount St. Helens, earthquake, whatever–it’s extremely unusual that 1/4 (or more?) of a city’s police force would bug out. Peter, let’s get real. That’s not only rare, it may very well be unique. I will recant if shown an example that even approaches the scale of NOPD’s adios to its citizens.
Smack me in the head if you must, but I don’t feel warm and fuzzy about NO or FEMA bankrolling some blackjack rehab for your cops. Sorry. If you believe the performance of NOPD measures up to law enforcement during Camille, Ivan, or any number of other disasters, then the concept of right and wrong loses all meaning.
Why in the world would the Orleans Parish School Board report to FEMA to perform an evacuation which was designed to be performed PRIOR to the storm hitting, according to the evacuation plan? Under the plan FEMA was supposed to come in three to four days AFTER the storm hit, which is exactly what they did. What about the 350 or so NO transit buses? Are you going to tell me that the mayor had no control over those as well?
Who was signatory to this plan? Who was supposed to implement it? Try reading it. Ray Nagin was the responsible officer. He failed.
And, by the way, BadTux, You stateed:
“Nagin and Blanco should rightly be criticized for holding off on declaring the mandatory evacuation until it was too late to activate the final phase of the evacuation plan (the bus phase for those without cars).”
So we are in agreement here. Nagin is the responible party for the fact that tens of thousands of citizens remained in NO at the time the storm hit. All subsequent problems, including the deterioration of the police presence, and suicide of your friend, derive from this failure.
Never been much of a NOPD fan after growing up in the city – but I have to agree with you on that. The police officers (and firemen/EMTs) that remianed (not anywhere near the entire force) were for many days alone in trying to protect the city. They are men and women like everyone else. They have families and homes that they worry about. As it is they may end up having to retrieve the bodies of their family, friends, colleagues. Ask the firefighters and police in New York – they will likely have a good idea of what the police and firefighters/EMTs who stayed are going though.