The troops were never deployed to restore order and eventually withdrew, despite the pleas of the convention center's management. Louisiana Guard commanders said their units' mission was not to secure the facility, and soldiers on the scene feared inciting further bloodshed if they had intervened. "We didn't want another Kent State," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, commander of the active-duty military forces responding to Katrina. "They weren't trained for crowd control.""We didn't want another Kent State."
...
"Everywhere I went, I saw people with guns in their hands," said Troy Harris, 18. "They were putting guns to people's heads."
...
"You declare martial law," said Jazz Washington, a community activist, "and to these gangsters that just means, 'We can kill you and keep on moving.' "
A gang broke into the locked alcohol storage areas and suddenly had 50 cases of hard liquor and 200 cases of beer. And before long, there were scenes of gangsters, drunk, groping after young girls -- and those scenes not far from the ones of women in corners, balled up, praying all frozen with a Hobson's choice: the gangsters, or the floodwaters.
"They took so much, they couldn't drink it all," said George Lancie, manager of the center's food-service company, who had been at Fore's side.
In the chaos, the youths hotwired anything that would move, including electric utility carts and forklifts. Tony Cash saw the forklifts being driven about in zigzags. "They were nearly running over people," he said. "I'm telling you, it was crazy."
Fore was at a loss as to how to quell the danger. He said he tried desperately to call local and state emergency authorities. But he never got through. And he looked and looked for the arrival of local police.
"You might see them drive by," he said. "Is that providing security?"
New Orleans police officials said they could not safeguard the center after Katrina left them short of officers, vehicles and a dependable communication system. And when their armory flooded, they were short of ammunition. Dozens of officers tried patrolling outside around the convention center, but, according to Lt. Melvin Howard, the crowds and darkness made it difficult and dangerous to work inside.
Police could not use flashlights without giving away their position and becoming possible targets, Howard said. Nor could they open fire, if confronted, without the risk of killing innocent people.
Troy Harris, 18, who had survived a gunshot to the stomach on the hard streets of New Orleans, thought he could handle himself anywhere in the city. The darkened convention center gravely tested his moxie. "They were robbing people in there. At gunpoint," he said. "Somebody robbed me of a hundred dollars."
...
A police officer tossed out a few bottles and drove off. It ignited a free for all. Doby himself looked on in horror as a man -- arguing over the water -- struck another man with a two-by-four. "That man, he was split" in the head, said Doby. "He was leaking. He just dropped, face first."
...
On Thursday, Cash left, taking her children and stealing a car that eventually got her to Baton Rouge. That same day, the New Orleans police made a dramatic entrance. Sgt. Hans Ganthier and 12 other New Orleans SWAT team members entered the center, M-4 commando rifles at the ready. Prayers had been answered -- only it was a rescue mission of a different purpose.
A Jefferson Parish police deputy had appealed to SWAT team Capt. Jeff Winn for help in bringing out his wife and a female relative from the center. "He knew they were there and was hearing nightmarish stories," said Ganthier, who declined to identify the officer for security reasons.
Winn approved the mission.
When the SWAT team entered at 11 a.m., the Jefferson Parish officer called out his wife's name. She heard him, and along with the relative rushed to his side. The SWAT team put the women in the middle of the team, then backed out the door.
Once it became clear that the SWAT team had come with the single goal of rescuing two white women, anger exploded.
"Racists!" one man cried out.
"Some people were upset we weren't rescuing them," said Ganthier. "It's hard to leave people behind like that, but we were aiding an officer."
By Tuesday night, a contingent of at least 250 Louisiana National Guard troops was hunkered down in Hall A, off Julia Street at the northern end of the building.
...
Instead, as the danger level grew, they felt they must first protect themselves.
"There was way too many of them and way too few of us," said Master Sgt. Chad Anderson, 37. "Since we couldn't help them, it was best to avoid them. They had a mob, crazy mentality."
Whenever the soldiers left the center on missions, they drove west on Julia Street and away from the throngs of people begging for food and water along Convention Center Boulevard. "When they saw the soldiers, they'd think, 'That's food,' " said Sgt. Karla Spillers, 26. "We didn't have any for them. We had to feed our own people."
Spillers said she felt pain at the knowledge that teenage girls were wandering around the center, alone, knowing they were possible prey.
"There were prisoners, mobsters, gangs" in there, she said.
Almost as soon as they arrived, Guard commanders became concerned enough about the safety of their troops that they ordered more weapons and ammunition. On Wednesday night, there was kicking and banging on the doors to Hall A, where the guardsmen were. "They were trying to break the doors and get us," said Anderson. "They knew we were there."
Maj. Keith Waddell, commander of the 769th Engineer Battalion, said his unit was never asked to quell the violence at the convention center. "The idea of helping with the convention center never came up," he said. "We were just preparing ourselves for the next mission."
Waddell said he believes that, if so ordered, the Louisiana Guard forces present would have been adequate to get the center under control.
"I feel confident we could have controlled it, with the numbers we had," Waddell said.
But senior commanders indicated they had ruled out that possibility. Col. Stephen C. Dabadie, chief of staff of the Louisiana National Guard, said the engineer units were "not designed to secure the convention center."
...
Early Thursday, the Guard troops packed up and rolled out amid angry calls from the crowd inside. Twenty-four hours elapsed before more troops arrived -- including a contingent of the Arkansas National Guard, imposing enough so that no one tried to bother them.
Many of the guardsmen had recently returned from Iraq, and they arrived wearing helmets and full body armor, and shouldering rifles. To their surprise, they encountered virtually no violence -- only a crowd of hot, frustrated, angry people desperate for food and water. "A lot of them said we should have been there earlier," said Spec. Keithean Heath of the Arkansas Guard's 39th Infantry Brigade.
You're shitting me, right? You're not seriously analogizing peaceful and unarmed protestors on a college campus with armed gangs raping, robbing and looting in a disaster area, are you? Because that's retarded. What a pathetic, insulting cop-out.
The other thing? Not enough National Guard. Not enough National Guard. Not enough National Guard. Where the fuck were they? The chaos and rapes and looting and robberies and fear and suffering might have been averted if we hadn't engaged in a war of choice with Iraq. Opportunity costs. It's not a tough concept.
[via Gilliard]
