Nagin forced Compass out

Times-Picayune ^ | Sept 29, 2005 | By Trymaine D. Lee and Walt Philbin

[abb]

After announcing his retirement Tuesday, New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass told several high-ranking officers that he had been forced out by Mayor Ray Nagin, the officers said Wednesday.

They said Compass told them the decision came on the heels of a heated confrontation with the mayor. The officers spoke only on condition that they not be named.

Reached Wednesday by e-mail, Nagin said that those accounts were "inaccurate."

Compass could not be reached for comment.

At a hastily called news conference Tuesday with Nagin in attendance, Compass announced that he was retiring. When asked by a reporter whether Compass was being forced out, Nagin said no.

But after the announcement, Compass returned to a cruise ship where he and other displaced officers had been living, where they say he told them he had been forced to resign.

[abb]

The plot thickens....

[Steely Tom]

Why you do that to a hero, mayor?

[HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath]

The Dems are using "Delay" tactics to try and keep a lid on the volcanic eruption of corruption that old Katrina ripped the covers off in the Big Sleazy.

[happinesswithoutpeace]

No more gun grabbing for Eddie.

[Jhensy]

The plot frickins.

[coconutt2000]

The Dems are using "Delay" tactics to try and keep a lid on the volcanic eruption of corruption that old Katrina ripped the covers off in the Big Sleazy.

In other words, you're questioning the timing of this revelation? ;-)

[GloriaJane]

Strange.... If the story is true, it makes one wonder why?

Maybe Nagin is setting it up to look like Compass was the only one involved in padding the books with cops who didn't exist? (if that story turns out to be true too)

"Katrinas Attempted Coup D'Tat" ...(At the bottom the page)

[beyond the sea]

Nagin wished Compass well, calling him a hero and saying that he hoped Compass would at least send him a Christmas card during the holidays. ----- Compass seemed to fight back tears. Handlers shuffled Nagin off in one direction, Compass in another.

"Handlers shuffled Nagin off in one direction, Compass in another" --- to your corners, boys, and come out fighting.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***The women were on the roof of the hotel, calling for help as floodwaters rose. Then a motorboat full of policemen came by. “Can you help us?” the women cried. The policemen replied, “Show us what you’ve got!” and motioned for them to lift their T-shirts.

The women said no. The policemen left them there.

I figured that story for an urban legend when one of my students wrote about it in a class I teach. Too crazy to be true, I thought.

But the tale turns out to be an eyewitness account from one Ged Scott, a bus driver from suburban Liverpool, England, who, with his wife and son, was on vacation in New Orleans when that city was swamped by Hurricane Katrina. Scott’s story has received considerable play in British newspapers; as near as I can tell, it has not been picked up stateside.

....Show us your breasts and we’ll get you out of here?

You’ll have to go some to find a better illustration of the utter banality of evil.

I’m reminded of a piece of wisdom picked up somewhere along the way: Crises, it said, do not so much build character as reveal it. Calamity, in other words, has this way of knocking down artifice and pretension; the devices people construct to keep other people from seeing who they really are. In a very real sense, you become yourself when things are disintegrating all around you.

Let’s face it, more than levees broke in New Orleans. Social order broke. Police authority broke. Chain of command broke. Communications broke. All the structures we build to restrain the floodwaters of human behavior broke....***

http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2005/09/29/opinion/opinion/doc433b648f82e9e731012202.txt

[Cincinatus' Wife]

From your source: ***....Even before Katrina, both Nagin and Compass had come under pressure, dealing with controversies over alleged underreporting of crime statistics in the 1st District, the enforcement of the residency rule for officers, and Compass' hiring of members of the Nation of Islam to do sensitivity training for the Police Department. The city also had seen a substantial rise in the murder rate in 2005.***

[abb]

My guess is that when the reporters started poking around asking questions about cops looting, etc., Nagin figured he best cut his losses...

[Sender]

Compass returned to a cruise ship where he and other displaced officers had been living

I am so sorry to learn of their hardship during this crisis. Clearly, GWB doesn't care about black people.

[Jeff Gordon]

padding the books with cops who didn't exist

Interesting. That explaination for the missing cops does make sense considering rhe Louisiana political climate.

[Non-Sequitur]

If true then it's about the only thing Nagin has done that I can agree with.

[pageonetoo]

That was the first thing that came to mind. Frist/delay...hmmmm Nagin/Blanco...hmmmmm

[McGavin999]

There was another police chief who was out speaking for the NO police, whatever happened to him? I haven't seen hide nor hair of him.

[MagnoliaB]

Or perhaps it's because the FBI is investigating the existence of 700 missing cops.

[FreedomPoster]

I've been trying to hit all these threads with the EDDIECOMPASS keyword. If anyone knows of other articles that should get it, please add it, or ping me to it. Thanks.

If you haven't seen the story about Tony Snow's report that the Feds are investigating the missing NOLA cops, and were finding they didn't exist, and were perhaps really phantom employees, you need to see that thread.

[zipper]

....and Compass' hiring of members of the Nation of Islam to do sensitivity training for the Police Department.

Isn't that a little like hiring the KKK to teach the NOPD how to rap?

[Cincinatus' Wife]

It sounds like government money being passed around to friends.

[OldFriend]

It's a mardi gras tradition. Show us your breasts and we'll throw you some beads.

This is a city that needs housecleaning, desperately.

[cynicom]

Ha..I think it is a fine tradition. hehehehe

[OldFriend]

Read that Farakhan is reporting that it was during his meeting with Nagin that he was apprised of the fact that the gummint blew up the levee in the poor neighborhoods.

[OldFriend]

LOL.....you DOM

[cynicom]

I was first there in 1950 as a rather young sprout and thought NO was a rather different type of place. It was corrupt then and I suspect always has been. The human filth was difficult for a kid to understand.

[OldFriend]

I was there for Hurricane Camille.

It was seedy but nothing like what it's become since that time.

My son wanted to apply to Tulane University for college and my husband would have none of it!

[TheBattman]

I personally believe that Compass was about to dump or "out" Nagin for his complicity in the corruption that accompanied the Katrina fiasco. If Nagin had more "power", Compass would have met with an "accident" - somewhat reminiscent of a "Clintoncide".

[wolfcreek]

Maybe, that's what he meant by " God's new direction for him"..... keeps him out of the bottom of the river.

[Katya]

Nagin hasn't been in office long enough to have orchestrated much of anything, including evacuating the city. Tick-tock....the news is oozing out bit by bit.

[Mini-14]

From SAF email/news release
COMPASS' DEPARTURE AS NEW ORLEANS CHIEF 'RIGHT, BUT NOT ENOUGH,' SAYS SAF

BELLEVUE, WA – The abrupt retirement announcement Tuesday by New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass was "the right thing to do, but not enough," said Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) founder Alan M. Gottlieb.

"While the departure of Chief Compass may begin a healing process that needs to occur between the police and law-abiding gun owners whose firearms were arbitrarily seized in the days after Hurricane Katrina," Gottlieb said, "there are many unanswered questions about who actually issued the order to confiscate guns, and the public has a right to know. New Orleans police officers, visiting officers from other jurisdictions and peace officers in surrounding parishes didn't just collectively dream up that confiscation effort.

"It was almost laughable," Gottlieb noted, "that right after SAF and the National Rifle Association joined forces in federal court to successfully stop the gun seizures, Mayor Ray Nagin's office scrambled to distance itself from the statements made by Compass and Deputy Chief Warren Riley that only police would be allowed to have guns, and that everyone else would be disarmed. It is disturbing that Nagin so quickly named Riley as interim chief."

Gottlieb acknowledged that the gun confiscations were merely the "last straw" in terms of Compass' final weeks as police chief. Under his watch, New Orleans saw its murder rate climb, and there were continuing problems of corruption within the department. Topping it off, he observed, were the desertions of officers from their posts, and reports that some officers even participated in the looting that followed Katrina.

"Yet, the problem remains," he said, "that nobody has admitted to being the source of the disarmament order. If it was Ray Nagin, he needs to come clean, although he's been so busy trying to blame every other Katrina failure on everybody else, it is doubtful he would ever admit issuing an order to take everyone's guns. If it was Chief Compass, then he ought to say so. If that order came from somewhere else, such as the governor's office or the state office of emergency services, Louisiana residents are entitled to that information.

"SAF and the NRA went to court to make sure this kind of thing never happens again," Gottlieb stated. "Finding out who is responsible for originally issuing the order is paramount. Leadership takes backbone. I don't see much of either right now in New Orleans."

[WasDougsLamb]

Someone needs to force Nagin out as well. He sure as heck isn't blameless.

[pepsionice]

My guess is that Nagin really didn't want Compass to press forward on the "lost" cop issue. He already knew that a significant number of the "lost" cops never existed, and that money was pouring into special friends on the force, and in the police union. Its likely the same with the fire department and with city emergency planning staff. If you spread enough people around and 1 out of every ten are bogus...people never notice this...and city HR can hide the checks as they slide out to bogus people. I'll bet at least 250 city employees were totally bogus by the time you come to the end. Nagin knew this completely. This will be his undoing within the next ten days. He will have someone to rat him out on some little issue and some little obvious lie will come out which the media will ask about.