Nagin forced Compass out

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

[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.