Posted on 09/01/2005 10:22:08 PM PDT by nickcarraway
New Orleans has one of the highest murder rates in the country. By mid-August of this year, 192 murders had been committed in New Orleans, "nearly 10 times the national average," reported the Associated Press. Gunfire is so common in New Orleans -- and criminals so fierce -- that when university researchers conducted an experiment last year in which they had cops fire 700 blank rounds in a neighborhood on a random afternoon "no one called to report the gunfire," reported AP.
New Orleans was ripe for collapse. Its dangerous geography, combined with a dangerous culture, made it susceptible to an unfolding catastrophe. Currents of chaos and lawlessness were running through the city long before this week, and they were bound to come to the surface under the pressure of natural disaster and explode in a scene of looting and mayhem.
Like riotous Los Angeles since the 1960s, New Orleans has been a wasteland of politically correct dysfunction for decades -- public schools so obviously decimated vouchers were proposed this year (and torpedoed by the left), barbaric gangster rap culture no one will confront lest they offend liberal pieties, multiculturalist frauds who empower no one but themselves, and cops neutered by the NAACP and ACLU.
Criminals have ruled New Orleans for some time, convincing many members of the middle class, long before the hurricane, that the city was unlivable. In 1994, New Orleans was the murder capital of America. It had 421 murders that year. Criminologists predicted 300 murders this year, a projection that now looks quite conservative.
Criminals dominate their neighborhoods to the point that people don't even call in crimes. The district attorney's office, tacitly admitting that the city's law-abiding citizens live in fear, has taken the "unusual" step of establishing a local witness protection program to encourage the reporting of crime, reports AP.
According to the New Orleans Police Foundation, most murderers get off -- only 1 in 4 are convicted -- and 42 percent of cases involving serious crimes since 2002 have been dropped by prosecutors.
Meanwhile, cops, when they can get away with it, have been living out of town. It is far too scary for them and their families. New Orleans Police officers are required to live in the city but many ignore this residency requirement, according to the Times-Picayune. The paper discovered that many top-ranking New Orleands cops lived in the suburbs and that most cops, both black and white, wanted the residency requirement rescinded.
For reasons of political correctness -- critics of law enforcement say lifting the residency requirement will mean more white cops eager to brutalize residents of the inner city and fewer black cops understanding of them -- the residency requirement remains, though cops breaking the rule told the Times-Picayune that it seriously hurts recruitment. It also -- this is particularly evident in Los Angeles where cops involved in the Ramparts scandal turned out to be ex-criminals -- distorts recruitment.
If the New Orleans Police Department has appeared feeble during the chaos -- and in some cases complicit in it -- policies like the residency requirement explain the breakdown. (Perhaps another factor that has rendered the NOPD feckless in the face of a rising murder rate is the criticism of its handling of a minority Mardi Gras.) Americans who have seen cops join in the looting ask: Why are police officers behaving like criminals? Well, because PC police departments like the NOPD hire them. Aggressive, let's-just-meet-the-quota-style affirmative action has become the door through which criminals enter the police academy.
More than the physical foundations of New Orleans will need to be rebuilt over the next few years. Its politically correct culture in which pathologies are allowed to fester in the name of "progress" forms much of the debris that must be cleared away if civilization is to return to New Orleans. A city which boasts as one of its businesses memorial "death t-shirts" -- clothing made popular by the frequency of gangland slayings in New Orleans that say things like, "Born a Pimp, Died a Playa" -- was headed for collapse even without a hurricane, and had become, as the exodus of cops illustrates, unlivable.
Conservative black leaders have been mau-maued into silence whenever they tell the truth about this barbarism and call for dramatic reform. But they are the ones who must lead the city now, and the phonies at organizations like the NAACP who despite all their rhetoric haven't done a thing to help the black underclass should step aside. Hurricane Katrina has made vivid the civilizational collapse they have long tried to conceal.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.
As a native of Louisiana, I can tell you that New Orleans has been that bad for decades. All one needs to do is to take a walk through the French Quarter during the day and you're immediately accosted by the stench of urine and vomit that dries in the streets.
New Orleans is hated by the rest of Louisiana because they have always gotten the lion's share of everything and yet, with all of the favoritism shown it, NO continues to spiral into the hell hole that it has become.
Walk!
Sheesh. It's slow, but it's free.
While working with a predominantly black crew of recyclers (paid off the books), I learned that "mother's day" comes once a month in their community, when a tide of federal (taxpayer) money washes through, temporarily lifting well-connected boats.
How can an area allow itself to become so PC that the residents fear for their lives and still elect officials that advocate following a PC lifestyle. I thought we in the USA had the right to vote such measures down. The logic totally escapes me!
What channel have you been watching? Al Jazeera?
And I bet you listen to Al Franken for all of your news, right?
If you've followed the threads here, you would know that such is not the case. The vast majority of folks here understand that taking food and other bona-fide necessities from an abandoned store is justified under the duress of the circumstances, provided that the owner is compensated for his loss. Ideally there should be a plan in place to have the local authorities secure such facilities to ensure that those genuinely in need (like elderly shut-ins) are able to have access to supplies. That's why public order is imperative. You can't help those in need if the gangstas are firing at rescuers with AK-47s. Taking control is the first priority.
Yes, there are thousands of people trapped down there without food or water. It's been four days, and that represents a major failure on the part government officials in charge - who were voted into office by the victims of their indolence, corruption and incompetence. I would also submit that a large part of this failure is the result of decades of PC-liberalism with respect to crime, thuggery, corruption and general immorality - just as the article's author does.
Jesse, is that you?
Those that need rescue can walk (or wade) to the outskirts of the city. Then ask for directions to a Red Cross station.
Looters is New Orleans have ensured that all rescue operations must initially regard ANY survivor as a potential hostile.
Looters that you act as an apologist for.
Yeah, I saw a new story about it. The ingrate had the nerve to complain about the MRE's that they were eating.
The same kind of food our military eats when there is no messing available while deployed.
But G-d forbid that any person from New Orleans should be forced to even look at one.
My family there has told me that some citizens have taken to carrying sidearms just to go to the store because of fear that looters are already there in Baton Rouge.
BUMP
This is so obvious in hindsight.
Why couldn't the city officials see it coming?
What, and risking having to get a job and losing their welfare handout? Surely, you jest.
Break into stores for their survival?
Do you eat plasma t.v's?
How about Nike's?
Shotguns? No?
Taking food to survive is one thing. No one needs to take a plasme tv to EAT!
"...whining for the government to come save them..."
No kidding, frigging walk out. I would have by now and I am disabled. And what is with these 300 lb plus women whining about not eating????
"...others are just trying to survive, no one can seem to admit that"
Actually many here have admitted that over and over. Our problem is with the animals assaulting others and stealing luxury items and guns and alcohol.
We also have a problem with anyone making excuses for them.
Dang, there are some parallels there aren't there. A mission of mercy, where members of the population turn hostile against the people trying to help. The resulting chaos causes more suffering for the common indiginous people who are already suffering. Now even Bill Clinton is brought in to help. Given Clinton's history in the "Mog," I hope they don't let him put his bungling fingers on too much.
Given that these are our own citizens, we are going to have to deal with this situation. Along with the rescue operation, the Fed needs to send a very large law and order presence to bring the lawlessness under control.
I thought there was quite a lot in NYC. I could be remembering wrong, and I'm in Boston, so it wouldn't have been local for me. But that's my recollection.
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