Posted on 09/08/2005 9:48:14 PM PDT by Sgt.Po-Po
— In a deserted subdivision, past mobile homes blown inside out and power poles snapped in two, there is an unassuming home with a two-car garage, porcelain ducks on the dining table and a swing set in the backyard.
The 26 men and women inside sleep next to their guns, scrounge for food, rely on handouts for things like toilet paper, and steal cars.
Then they get up in the morning and try to save the city.
This is what it's come to for the New Orleans Police Department, where authorities estimated Tuesday that 70% of the city's 1,700 officers are homeless.
The department has been decimated by Hurricane Katrina. Two officers have put their guns in their mouths and killed themselves. More than 200 have quit. About 500 are unaccounted for. The rest have fought with looters, run out of ammunition, fended off criticism of their response to the storm and been knocked off rescue boats into the fetid stew that covers more than half the city.
For more than a week, they have dealt with personal tragedies no different from anyone else's here — apartments that are underwater, parents who are missing, children who are being shuttled from one shelter to the next.
Two dozen of them found their way to the home of Lt. David M. Benelli, 55, commander of the city's sex crimes unit, and the woman he calls his child bride, Sgt. Becky Benelli, 42, assistant commander of the crime lab. The Benellis are cops to the core; they met at a traffic fatality and fell in love.
The officers at "Camp Benelli" in the Algiers area of New Orleans reflect the diversity of the department: 21 men and five women, black and white, 33-year veterans and patrol cops with six months under their belts.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Bump
I'd say Bush should decorate these few, and the rest never get a job in LE anywhere any time.
Obviously committed.
Probably *would* turn down a free trip to Vegas or Atlanta.
---Two officers have put their guns in their mouths and killed themselves. More than 200 have quit. About 500 are unaccounted for. The rest have fought with looters, run out of ammunition, fended off criticism of their response to the storm and been knocked off rescue boats into the fetid stew that covers more than half the city.---
I keep 700 rounds in a waterproof can for my SKS and 300 rounds for my Glock. It's just good military sense to keep adequate stocks of ammo for your weapon. The basic load of ammo for an M-16 is 150 rounds. Each cop should have had that at least. That's enough to go out on patrol. The cop should have enough sense to supply himself if the department won't. Each armed citizen is a member of the militia after all.
Uh brave, so are the fast footed 600 part of the brave?
I count 702 cowards, and the headline uses the word "brave"?
And that is out of a force of 1700.
Throw in the ones directing the looting, and you rapidly wonder about whether even 10% of the force deserves "brave" as a descriptor.
I imagine that quite a few deserve respect, but they have been shamefully abandoned by a very large number of their peers.
That their superior officers and political leaders would not unambiguously denounce the insubordination and cowardice of deserters highlights the depth of the problem in NOLA. If there isn't a law against desertion of a LE officer during an emergency, there should be and it should be vigorously enforced.
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