🚀 go-pugleaf

Where are most of the guys of the National Guard and the Army?

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [NYTr] Looting Takes Place in View of La. Police
Date: 30 Aug 2005 22:04:22 -0500
From: nytr@olm.blythe-system

Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
[... and the National Guard is in Iraq. And the Army is in Iraq.
And therfe are 10,000 poor, sick and elderly trapped in the Superdome
with no power, lights, air conditioning, safe water, sewage, or dry 
spots to sit or lie down or avoid falling on slippery wet surfaces.]

AP via Yahoo - Aug 30, 2005
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050830/ap_on_re_us/katrina_looting

Looting Takes Place in View of La. Police

By ALLEN G. BREED
Associated Press Writer

NEW ORLEANS - With much of the city flooded by Hurricane Katrina,
looters floated garbage cans filled with clothing and jewelry down the
street in a dash to grab what they could. In some cases, looting on
Tuesday took place in full view of police and National Guard troops.

At a Walgreen's drug store in the French Quarter, people were running
out with grocery baskets and coolers full of soft drinks, chips and diapers.

When police finally showed up, a young boy stood in the door screaming,
"86! 86!"  the radio code for police  and the crowd scattered.

Denise Bollinger, a tourist from Philadelphia, stood outside and snapped
pictures in amazement.

"It's downtown Baghdad," the housewife said. "It's insane. I've wanted
to come here for 10 years. I thought this was a sophisticated city. I
guess not."

Around the corner on Canal Street, the main thoroughfare in the central
business district, people sloshed headlong through hip-deep water as
looters ripped open the steel gates on the front of several clothing and
jewelry stores.

One man, who had about 10 pairs of jeans draped over his left arm, was
asked if he was salvaging things from his store.

"No," the man shouted, "that's EVERYBODY'S store."

Looters filled industrial-sized garbage cans with clothing and jewelry
and floated them down the street on bits of plywood and insulation as
National Guard lumbered by.

Mike Franklin stood on the trolley tracks and watched the spectacle unfold.

"To be honest with you, people who are oppressed all their lives, man,
it's an opportunity to get back at society," he said.

A man walked down Canal Street with a pallet of food on his head. His
wife, who refused to give her name, insisted they weren't stealing from
the nearby Winn-Dixie supermarket. "It's about survival right now," she
said as she held a plastic bag full of purloined items. "We got to feed
our children. I've got eight grandchildren to feed."

At a drug store on Canal Street just outside the French Quarter, two
police officers with pump shotguns stood guard as workers from the
Ritz-Carlton Hotel across the street loaded large laundry bins full of
medications, snack foods and bottled water.

"This is for the sick," Officer Jeff Jacob said. "We can commandeer
whatever we see fit, whatever is necessary to maintain law."

Another office, D.J. Butler, told the crowd standing around that they
would be out of the way as soon as they got the necessities.

"I'm not saying you're welcome to it," the officer said. "This is the
situation we're in. We have to make the best of it."

The looting was taking place in full view of passing National Guard
trucks and police cruisers.

One man with an armload of clothes even asked a policeman, "can I borrow
your car?"

Some in the crowd splashed into the waist-deep water like giddy children
at the beach.
       
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