After seeing images of all the looting going on, it just made me so sad. How is it possible that society came down to this?

Like KR said, it's one thing to be taking food and water, and quite another to be stealing TV's, GUNS and things of that nature. I heard reports of people in cars trying to get away from the path of the storm were being carjacked by people with guns. It's a really sad day when we get to the point where real-life society is mirroring what happened in the Tom Cruise version of "War of the Worlds" and people start turning on each other like that.

See, I've heard about six different versions of that same story, from reputable news sources. It's going to be very hard to separate the truth from the overexaggerations (and we know how much Southerners love to exaggerate!) with stories like that, so it's probably best not to repeat them. I'm sure part of that story is true, but still...

I'm also beginning to think that having a gun on hand isn't that terrible of an idea in an event like this.

I haven’t seen any news reports about the rape so I cant really comment. However, I have several friends who live at nearby apartment complexes who all have had their cars burglarized. Police presence in the area is through the roof and crime is still spiking. A Shell gas station near the ‘Dome has become a popular hangout so much in fact there are two squad cars parked outside twenty-four hours a day now. Six-Flags Astroworld had planned on having free admission for all refugees but later reneged on the promise because of the jump in crime in the surrounding area. A direct quote from a friend who works there “they told everyone we would be closing early and to be to your car before dark.”

I think we need to keep in mind that there were reports of rape, fights, theft and aggression at the Superdome and Convention and the same people have been moved to the Astrodome and other shelters. When you evacuate a city, you evacuate everybody, not just the model citizens. There are rapes, thefts, aggression and murders in our society. Why would the people who commit those crimes behave any differently when relocated? If 2% of the population of NO were criminals, then 2% of those evacuated are. We are only going to hear about the extreme situations.

Realize that extreme stress has extreme effects on people. Inevitably, some of the people who were evacuated are mentally ill with no access to their medications. People are pushed to their limits which can cause psychotic breaks in those prone to mental illness.

These people are also American citizens who paid their taxes at one point and time. They expected that the mayor would have an emergency plan in place as required by Homeland Security. They expected an evacuation procedure in place. They expected a governor to have a contingency plan in place if local National Guardmen are in Iraq. They expected the FEMA director to do the job he was chosen for. Also they expected that the very President who some may have voted into office not leave them at the side of the road like roadkill to be picked up four days later.

There are illegal immigrants who have gotten way better treatment than what these people who you've referred to have gotten lately.It makes me wonder what else is flying under the radar with everyone asleep at their designated post.

There is no excuse for violence in any situation. But no deserves the treatment they received by our government. EVERYONE IN GOVERNMENT DROPPED THE BALL.

When I saw that member of Spain's parliment surrounded by a National guardsmen escorted with her family quickly through the NOLA airport and there were fellow Americans being ignored that ticked me off.

The hope would be that the intaking cities have police and jail space to handle it. Also, psychiatric wards! I'd bet that some of those hospitals that were such a mess had to have had some psychiatric wards. I wonder if those folks were evacuated ahead of time.

I definitely agree here. There are so many people -- a quarter of a million according to the last newscast I saw-- currently located in Texas cities like Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Corpus Christi. I am pretty sure there are several thousand more in other states as well. I don't feel like being a victim of a hurricane is an excuse to act the way some of these people are acting. Cities are doing everything they can to help these people start new lives and it isn't fair for the people trying to help to have to deal with crime brought on by some of the refugees at the same time.

A local newscast mentioned there is a curfew at some of the shelters... does anyone know how this is actually enforced? If they are given free bus passes, and there are literally hundreds (or in some cases thousands) of refugees staying there, how is that enforced?

And this is also random, but I just noticed I used the word "refugees" at least a couple of times. It's really weird b/c before the hurricane, when I heard the word "refugees" I thought of third-world-type countries... it's just weird to use it when you are referring to people in your own country..

Subject: a survivor's story: Katrina in New Orleans
i heard from my aunt last night that my cousin Denise
made it out of New Orleans; she's at her brother's in
Baton Rouge. from what she told me:
her mother, a licensed practical nurse, was called in
to work on Sunday night at Memorial Hospital
(historically known as Baptist Hospital to those of us
from N.O.). Denise decided to stay with her mother,
her niece and grandniece (who is 2 years old); she
figured they'd be safe at the hospital. they went to
Baptist, and had to wait hours to be assigned a room
to sleep in; after they were finally assigned a room,
two white nurses suddenly arrived after the cut-off
time (time to be assigned a room), and Denise and her
family were booted out; their room was given up to the
new nurses. Denise was furious, and rather than stay
at Baptist, decided to walk home (several blocks away)
to ride out the storm at her mother's apartment. her
mother stayed at the hospital.
she described it as the scariest time in her life. 3
of the rooms in the apartment (there are only 4) caved
in. ceilings caved in, walls caved in. she huddled
under a mattress in the hall. she thought she would
die from either the storm or a heart attack. after the
storm passed, she went back to Baptist to seek shelter
(this was Monday). it was also scary at Baptist; the electricity was
out, they were running on generators, there was no air conditioning.
Tuesday the levees broke, and water began rising. they moved patients
upstairs, saw boats pass by on what used to be streets. they were told
that they would be evacuated, that buses were coming. then they were
told they would have to walk to the nearest intersection, Napoleon and
S. Claiborne, to await the buses. they waded out in hip-deep water, only
to stand at the intersection, on the neutral ground (what y'all call the
median) for 3 1/2 hours. the buses came and took them to the Ernest
Morial Convention Center. (yes, the convention center you've all seen on
TV.)
Denise said she thought she was in hell. they were
there for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter.
Denise, her mother (63 years old), her niece (21 years
old), and 2-year-old grandniece. when they arrived,
there were already thousands of people there. they
were told that buses were coming. police drove by,
windows rolled up, thumbs up signs. national guard
trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with guns
cocked and aimed at them. nobody stopped to drop off
water. a helicopter dropped a load of water, but all
the bottles exploded on impact due to the height of
the helicopter.
the first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her.
the second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her.
Denise told me the people around her all thought they
had been sent there to die. again, nobody stopped. the
only buses that came were full; they dropped off more
and more people, but nobody was being picked up and
taken away. they found out that those being dropped
off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they
got off the buses delirious from lack of water and
food. completely dehydrated. the crowd tried to keep
them all in one area; Denise said the new arrivals had
mostly lost their minds. they had gone crazy.
inside the convention center, the place was one huge
bathroom. in order to shit, you had to stand in other
people's shit. the floors were black and slick with
shit. most people stayed outside because the smell was
so bad. but outside wasn't much better: between the
heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the old and
very young dying from dehydration... and there was no
place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. they
slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.
Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there.
but they organized the crowd. they went to Canal
Street and "looted," and brought back food and water
for the old people and the babies, because nobody had
eaten in days. when the police rolled down windows and
yelled out "the buses are coming," the young men with
guns organized the crowd in order: old people in
front, women and children next, men in the back. just
so that when the buses came, there would be priorities
of who got out first.
Denise said the fights she saw between the young men
with guns were fist fights. she saw them put their
guns down and fight rather than shoot up the crowd.
but she said that there were a handful of people shot
in the convention center; their bodies were left
inside, along with other dead babies and old people.
Denise said the people thought there were being sent
there to die. lots of people being dropped off, nobody
being picked up. cops passing by, speeding off.
national guard rolling by with guns aimed at them. and
yes, a few men shot at the police, because at a
certain point all the people thought the cops were
coming to hurt them, to kill them all. she saw a young
man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit;
he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot
him in the back. in front of the whole crowd. she saw
many groups of people decide that they were going to
walk across the bridge to the west bank, and those
same groups would return, saying that they were met at
the top of the bridge by armed police ordering them to
turn around, that they weren't allowed to leave.
so they all believed they were sent there to die.
Denise's niece found a pay phone, and kept trying to
call her mother's boyfriend in Baton Rouge, and
finally got through and told him where they were. the boyfriend, and
Denise's brother, drove down from Baton Rouge and came and got them.
they had to bribe a few cops, and talk a few into letting them into the
city ("come on, man, my 2-year-old niece is at the Convention Center!"),
then they took back roads to get to them.
after arriving at my other cousin's apartment in Baton
Rouge, they saw the images on TV, and couldn't believe
how the media was portraying the people of New
Orleans. she kept repeating to me on the phone last
night: make sure you tell everybody that they left us
there to die. nobody came. those young men with guns
were protecting us. if it wasn't for them, we wouldn't
have had the little water and food they had found.
that's Denise Moore's story.
Lisa C. Moore

Yeah, I suppose some think they shot at the rescuers because they thought they were coming to hurt them.

And some think that they stole and looted non-survival items like televisions because they wanted to trade those items for food on the booming underground electronics market in New Orleans.

-Rudey

Originally posted by PM_Mama00
Nowhere did I say that these people don't deserve better treatment. I think it's disgusting to, as someone said in another thread, "bite the hand that feeds you". WHY should the people in these Texas towns, such as what Kevlar described, have to live in fear now because of the hoodlums that came over with the well-deserving people? It's not fair to them. It's not fair that they could possibly paint a negative reputation for all of the "refugees" that want the help and are not acting like animals.

I just feel compelled to disagree 110% with you. You speak about fairness as if anything that has happened in the last week is fair. It isn't 'fair' that people have lost their homes and everything that they've worked for. It isn't 'fair' that expecting moms have waited for nine months to see their children only to have them die b/c they were born into deplorable conditions. It isn't fair that families have been ripped apart and devastated. However, this is the situation that we are ALL faced with, and we just have to deal. Unfortunately that includes the residents of all the cities that these victims have to evacuate to.

I understand that in these conditions people can start to go "crazy" like Dee described, but those who are caught doing these things should be held and taken back to the Superdome. Let them form their own little colony of felons. I don't think the intaking cities should have to suffer their liberty and freedom after offering a great situation of help.

I don't even know if you're serious here or just frustrated. There are people who have legitimate mental issues who have been w/o medicines for several days. Now I have seen people who are generally very calm and loveable transform into entirely different persons when w/o their medicines. Are you suggesting that we should throw away these people's lives by leaving them in the city/Superdome (amongst lawlessness, disease, and starvation) to die b/c this disaster has rendered them incapable of maintaining their normal stable mental state? There are people who have looted for survival. Now the president said that there should be zero tolerance, so should we follow your contingency plan and leave those people too? There are drug addicts who have been w/o a fix in weeks and are beginning to flip out. Now it may seem easy for you to toss away the crack addict 'Tyronne Bigums' character, but do you feel the same way about the suburban housewife who has been struggling with a crystal meth addiciton and has begun to resort to crimes to get her fix? Should we toss her in the Superdome to fend for herself too? Now I know that you might say, well these aren't the people that I'm talking about. I mean the regular theives and murders who do this type of thing for fun and are just taking advantage of the situation. Honestly, I don't doubt that these people are out there, but how are you supposed to separate the 2. We don't have time/manpower to review each situation on a case by case basis. Furthermore we certainly don't have the police power to cart all of these criminals back to the Superdome even if we were going to go with this 'let them kill themselves' plan of attack. If they had that much police power, then the situation wouldn't have gotten out of control in the 1st place. Lastly, how are we supposed to take back the Superdome when this is all over? Do you think that they will all just kill themselves off, or are we just going to come in and shoot everybody, cart the bodies away, and call it a sunny day in the city? Again, I can't tell if you're just frustrated, or if you just really care so little for SOME human lives.

Yes I said animals. And it has nothing to do with race.

OK last point. I just found this statement really interesting b/c I think that your post is an exaggeration of the attitude that existis in the country on a larger scale. This whole, segregate them from the remainder of 'good society' and let them kill themselves off mentality #1 sadly only increases the divide btwn economic classes in the country (and ultimately btwn races), #2 only amplifies disasters like this one where you have large communities of people too poor to help themselves and are stuck relying on assistance, and #3 doesn't do anything to actually reduce the actual problems. Why do we have such large ghettos of poor people in this country and others around the world? It seems a little too easy to just move away, and wipe your hands of the 'less desirable' elements. It is too easy for us to say, "oh they should have helped themselves." This whole throw away attitude is why you have portions of the city that get lesss city services, less aide and attention, and are allowed to spiral so that the poor of society are victims to the criminal element. I can't help but to think that what happens everyday in every major city paralells what happened this past week in NO. I really appreciate how the nation has banded together this week to provide assistance to those who are in need. It has truly been a beautiful site. However, I hope that some of the people will make helping these same people escape poverty permanently a part of their everyday agenda even after this crisis has passed.

people on gc are some backpeddling mofos.

I heard there was a man who raped a 13 year old in the super dome and that he was beaten to death there after.

-Rudey