I'm ashamed to admit that I don't know all the details on this, Harry: I'm not sure how it all worked out in the end.Originally Posted by harry mac
First of all, the New Orleans Police Department has a VERY bad reputation for corruption: VERY bad! Cases in the news involving them over the past several years have included;
- a couple of rapes committed by on-duty officers:
- an off-duty officer working as a security guard at a restaurant who also worked as an accomplice to a holdup at the same restaurant, and shot and killed the restaurant owners:
- a ring of officers working as enforcers for a local drug gang:
- an officer who contracted with a drug dealer to murder someone who had testified against him in a police brutality trial...
...With that sort of track record, we tend not to put much trust in our men in blue!(Or women either: the officer in the restaurant hold-up was female).
My wife and I were here for Katrina from the time it arrived Sunday night, until the following Saturday. The floodwaters stopped about a mille away from our house, and we are grateful that we have no personal horror stories to tell. However, we learned later that beginning the next week, the police began practically forcing everyone to leave the city.
I DO know that police confiscated guns from many law-abiding people, which they had no right to do. We attended an event later, sponsored by the NRA, where we watched a video tape of several NOPD officers wrestling a gun away from an old woman. She had not threated anyone with the pistol, nor was it against the law for her to own it.
The police had gone to her house, ostensibly to see if she was OK, and to urge her to evacuate. She told them that her house hadn't flooded, that she had plenty of drinking water and canned food - and her Dad's old revolver for protection - and had no intentions of leaving.
When she showed them the revolver, they attacked her to get it away from her. I believe that they broke her wrist in the process of prying it loose. All of this was caught on videotape!
The NRA launched a lawsuit to get all confiscated guns returned. As I recall, the city at first stated that they no longer had the guns: then admitted that they did. I believe that they have been returned - at least, for the most part - to their rightful ownere: but let me check on that, because you've whetted my curiousity!
Jim
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