Man, this is very depressing. Law Officers, Overwhelmed, Are Quitting the Force http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/04/n...26497600&en=78d1ab3e2ca00a23&ei=5070&emc=eta1 By JOSEPH B. TREASTER Published: September 4, 2005 NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 - Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers have walked away from their jobs and two have committed suicide, police officials said on Saturday. Some officers told their superiors they were leaving, police officials said. Others worked for a while and then stopped showing up. Still others, for reasons not always clear, never made it in after the storm. The absences come during a period of extraordinary stress for the New Orleans Police Department. For nearly a week, many of its 1,500 members have had to work around the clock, trying to cope with flooding, an overwhelming crush of refugees, looters and occasional snipers. P. Edwin Compass III, the superintendent of police, said most of his officers were staying at their posts. But in an unusual note of sympathy for a top police official, he said it was understandable that many were frustrated. He said morale was "not very good." "If I put you out on the street and made you get into gun battles all day with no place to urinate and no place to defecate, I don't think you would be too happy either," Mr. Compass said in an interview. "Our vehicles can't get any gas. The water in the street is contaminated. My officers are walking around in wet shoes." Fire Department officials said they did not know of any firefighters who had quit. But they, too, were sympathetic to struggling emergency workers. W. J. Riley, the assistant superintendent of police, said there were about 1,200 officers on duty on Saturday. He said the department was not sure how many officers had decided to abandon their posts and how many simply could not get to work. Mr. Riley said some of the officers who left the force "couldn't handle the pressure" and were "certainly not the people we need in this department." He said, "The others are not here because they lost a spouse, or their family or their home was destroyed." Police officials did not identify the officers who took their lives, one on Saturday and the other the day before. But they said one had been a patrol officer, who a senior officer said "was absolutely outstanding." The other was an aide to Mr. Compass. The superintendent said his aide had lost his home in the hurricane and had been unable to find his family. Because of the hurricane, many police officers and firefighters have been isolated and unable to report for duty. Others evacuated their families and have been unable to get back to New Orleans. Still, some officers simply appear to have given up. A Baton Rouge police officer said he had a friend on the New Orleans force who told him he threw his badge out a car window in disgust just after fleeing the city into neighboring Jefferson Parish as the hurricane approached. The Baton Rouge officer would not give his name, citing a department policy banning comments to the news media. The officer said he had also heard of an incident in which two men in a New Orleans police cruiser were stopped in Baton Rouge on suspicion of driving a stolen squad car. The men were, in fact, New Orleans officers who had ditched their uniforms and were trying to reach a town in north Louisiana, the officer said. "They were doing everything to get out of New Orleans," he said. "They didn't have the resources to do the job, or a plan, so they left." The result is an even heavier burden on those who are patrolling the street, rescuing flood victims and trying to fight fires with no running water, no electricity, no reliable telephones. Police and fire officials have been begging federal authorities for assistance and criticizing a lack of federal response for several days. "We need help," said Charles Parent, the superintendent of the Fire Department. Mr. Parent again appealed in an interview on Saturday for replacement fire trucks and radio equipment from federal authorities. And Mr. Compass again appealed for more federal help. "When I have officers committing suicide," Mr. Compass said, "I think we've reached a point when I don't know what more it's going to take to get the attention of those in control of the response." The National Guard has come under criticism for not moving more quickly into New Orleans. Lt. Gen. H Steven Blum, the head of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters on Saturday that the Guard had not moved in sooner because it had not anticipated the collapse of civilian law enforcement. Some patrol officers said morale had been low on the force even before the hurricane. One patrolman said the complaints included understaffing and a lack of equipment. "We have to use our own shotguns," said the patrolman, who did not want to be identified by name. "This isn't theirs; this is my personal gun." Another patrol officer said that many of the officers who had quit were younger, inexperienced officers who were overwhelmed by the task. Some officers have expressed anger at colleagues who have stopped working. "For all you cowards that are supposed to wear the badge," one officer said on Fox News, "are you truly - can you truly wear the badge, like our motto said?" The Police and Fire Departments are being forced to triage the calls they get for help. The firefighters are simply not responding to some fires. In some cases, they cannot get through the flooding. But in others, they decide not to send trucks because they are needed for more serious fires. "We can't fight every fire the way we did in the past and try to put it out," Superintendent Parent told a group of firefighters on Saturday morning at a promotion ceremony in the Algiers section of New Orleans, a dry area. Even facing much more work than could possibly be handled, he said, it was important for him to take time out for two promotion ceremonies. "The men need reinforcement," said Mr. Parent, who put on his last clean uniform shirt for the ceremonies elevating 22 officers to the rank of captain. "They need to see their leader and understand that the department is still here and not going to pot." Susan Saulny contributed reporting from Baton Rouge, La., for this article, and John DeSantis from New Orleans.
Those who 'quit' out of no reason other than the job was 'too hard' and not 'worth the reward' I have no respect for, and that is what differentiates 'heroes' from 'cowards'. As for those who committed suicide, it's heartbreaking, but I understand why it happened. The suicide issue also higlights what some of our own guests here in Houston are going through. I saw a story last night on local news where a local religious leader had to talk a woman out of committing suicide, because she lost everything, including some family members. THIS is where local religious leaders are best equipped to come in and help to fill this spiritual/emotional void that these victims are going through. Local churches can help out best in that regard, and I know for a fact that a few local church leaders are on the scene in the AstroDome and elsewhere helping out in that regard.
New Orleans has the lowest paid major city police force in the nation. When I last saw figures, about 5 years ago, the starting salary was about $17,500/yr.
Go do what they are doing and tell me any of them are cowards. Seriously.. it blows me away that you would say that, do you realize what they are going through? They are all risking their lives, the job is above their heads.. it is a military operation, a difficult military operation at that.. and you're asking municipal police officers to do it, and in such small numbers, with hardly any help or supplies? You've got to be kidding me. Most of these officers lost their homes too, and have families to take care of, it is affecting them too.
Exactly. To them they look around and say, "what is there to save or protect? some JC Penny stores?", hell, most of them probably look around and think "hey, i'm stuck here without food or water, I don't know where my family is.. *I* need saving!"
What's really troubling to me about this story is how similar it sounds to stories we hear coming out of Iraq of Iraqi police ditching their uniforms or badges out of fear for their safety or disillusionment with the job. As with a lot of things its easy to call these people cowards and unworthy of the badge from a distance but I bet things look a lot different when you're there.
You understand why it they commited suicide but you can't understand why they are quitting? Do they have to kill themselves too for you to understand? Oxymoron.
Nonsense. People are so judgemental when they're typing from their comfortable homes on their nice computers. They actually have NO IDEA what's really happening in NO. No idea.
Apparently some people are either literally challenged or I didn't make myself clear. In either case, let me clarify... I did NOT say that those who had to go and save their families or had other higher priorities are cowards, and I said those who had NO other priorities beyond doing their jobs and decided not to do them for whatever reason were wrong to do so, but I understand their decision to do just that and leave their fellow policemen out and about to try and cover for them and do the job. I clearly said those who didn't have more overriding priorities. I think the use of the word 'cowards' was wrong on my part, so I will retract that. However, much like soldiers in a war zone, policemen do not have the luxury of quitting when times get rough, they fully knew of the risks they were taking when they signed up to the job, and therefore have an obligation and are expected to be 'heroic' when everyone else is running the opposite way; firemen run towards the fire, not away from it. With that being said, my guess would be that the majority of those cops who had gone missing were caught up helping out loved ones to escape town, while others might have perished along with thousands of their fellow NOLA residents. And please don't make assumptions about my past as a person who is sitting and typing and being judgemental, you don't know me and you don't know my past. Point taken though...
