N.O. Police Fire 51 for Desertion

[45acpSHOOTER]

N.O. Police Fire 51 for Desertion

Friday, October 28, 2005

NEW ORLEANS — Fifty-one members of the New Orleans Police Department — 45 officers and six civilian employees — were fired Friday for abandoning their posts before or after Hurricane Katrina (search).

"They were terminated due to them abandoning the department prior to the storm," acting superintendent Warren Riley (search) said. "They either left before the hurricane or 10 to 12 days after the storm and we have never heard from them."

Police were unable to account for 240 officers on the 1,450-member force following Katrina. The force has been investigating them to see if they left their posts during the storm.

The mass firing was the first action taken against the missing officers (search). Another 15 officers resigned when placed under investigation for abandonment.

"This isn't representative of our department," Riley said. "We had a lot of heroes that stepped up after the storm."

Another 45 officers resigned from the force after the Aug. 29 storm. The resignations were for personal reasons ranging from relocation to new employment, Riley said.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,173879,00.html

 

[CombatArmsUSAF]

Good, They had it coming!

 

[beerslurpy]

How can you fire 51 non-existant people? Do they simply return to the fairy land of accounting tricks from whence they came?

 

[LoneStranger]

The curiousity in my mind is the approx. 250 officers that nobody can even find at this time. How do 250 sworn, fingerprinted, photographed officers disappear so completely that no one has any idea where they are?

 

[beerslurpy]

Have you seen the photographs or fingerprints? I havent.

"FBI fingerprint study reveals that 250 members of NOPD were identical clones of Eddie Compass! Christians outraged at unsanctioned use of cloning!" Then again, maybe he who has the gold bends the rules.

 

[TMAS]

The sad part is

Now that they were fired from down there, our sheriff's dept or city PD will probably hire them. They will work somewhere.

If they exist...

 

[Standing Wolf]

This isn't representative of our department...

Apparently, the 51 fired don't represent the looters.

 

[Borachon]

How can you fire 51 non-existant people? Do they simply return to the fairy land of accounting tricks from whence they came?

I believe they existed (at least a portion of them...say 35 officers or so). Personally, I also believe many if not all of them died in New Orleans...either dead from the direct effects of the flooding, or by the effects of the breakdown of society afterward.
I've got this big conspiracy theory that basically breaks down to the government being unwilling to reveal the true extent of how many people died. So they are covering up the deaths of the police officers to keep the political hot potato from landing on their administration. The remaining 16 or so officers really did desert their posts and can be paraded out if need be to show that they really did run away. Meanwhile the others are just buried and forgotten.

Firing these (real, but falsely accused of desertion) police officers allows the city to save money on pensions..death benefits....etc. They can just bury them and claim ignorance about their locations when relatives come calling.

Yeah..I know. Sounds crazy. But if I told you 10 days before the hurricane that new orleans had several hundred fake officers on their payroll and no one from the State auditors, Social Security Admin, or the FBI noticed it, you'd have called me crazy on that one too. So 6 of one, half a dozen of the other.

It's a strange situation no matter how you cut it.

 

[Zip06]

Looks like they are rolling over on this one. Another thing they are ignoring is the illegal order that Chief Compass gave to confiscate the guns.

What a disgrace.

 

[LHB1]

Borachon,
Do you know what your alias means? Isn't it correctly spelled "borrachon"? Have you been imbibing too much again? Just couldn't resist. I have no idea whether you are right, wrong, or whatever.

Good shooting and be safe.
LB

 

[beerslurpy]

I am personally surprised almost no cops died, what with all the chaos going on, not to mention the door kicking. Its a plausible theory, to say the least. I certainly wouldnt put politically convenient dishonesty past the NOLA leadership.

 

[Borachon]

Do you know what your alias means?

I don't know how it's spelled in Spanish, but it's suppose to mean "drunk". Does the way I spell it mean something else?

 

[Borachon]

politically convenient dishonesty past the NOLA leadership.

I don't think I'd stop with just local leadership. Lots of politicos...local, state, and Federal...would have good reasons to hope that the problems from Katrina would just go away.

Which seems more plausible to you? That NOPD got away with lying about the number of cops on their roles (to the tune of several hundred police officers) and that no one in the State employment office, state tax office, insurance companies, Social Security Administration, the IRS, the FBI and no doubt fifteen other alphabet agencies that I've never heard of FAILED to notice that New Orleans was carrying an extra FIVE HUNDRED officers on their roles...with the intent to defraud, or that these officers died in the line of duty but no one wants to admit that they did so because it would be politically embarrassing to New Orleans officials, Louisiana state officials, FEMA, and officers in the Federal Govt to admit that they were unprepared for the conditions of the aftermath of a major hurricane...even though their own experts had been telling them for years?

To me it seems easier to believe that they are just covering up their dead. It saves them political grief, and it saves them money they'd have to pay on pensions.

 

[SalTx]

I don't think an officer "abandoning" the city is deserving of that much criticism. It is just a job. You do it for the money, benefits, pension. It is not about valor, altruism, etc. Just a thought.

 

[Owen]

It is once you are a sworn officer.

 

[MikeIsaj]

we have never heard from them."

And of course the reasonable assumption is that they exhibited the same cowardice as the mayor and governor. Have they looked for these people? Could they have actually died heroes, their death a result of them not abandoning their posts?

In this day, unless you work very hard at it, people leave a trail behind them. It is not hard to track a person who isn't trying to hide his trail. It's not much harder to track an eluxive person. I cannot believe that if these cops existed to begin with they just vanished and are still alive somewhere.

 

[LHB1]

Borachon,
"borrachon" is Spanish for drunk person.
AFAIK "borachon" is not a valid word.

Good shooting and be safe. (Don't be a borrachon while shooting.)
LB

 

[dpesec]

I don't think an officer "abandoning" the city is deserving of that much criticism. It is just a job. You do it for the money, benefits, pension. It is not about valor, altruism, etc. Just a thought.

Sal, that's the problem. Many jobs that require the qualities you list are becoming just that, a job. Wehn we pay these individuals low wages, treat them like scum and second quess every decision we get what we deserve.

Thinking about the SHTF in NO, how many of us would be willing to risk our lives?

 

[mr_dove]

No matter what my job is, my family will always be my first responsability. I will protect them first. I presume that some officers needed to be with their families and they did so. I'm sure they have no regrets whatsoever at having put their families first.

 

[agricola]

There is something very spooky about this - unless these people are paid cash in hand, there will always be a paper trail for them to follow in order to locate someone if they want to (bank transactions, contact details, phone usage etc).

In the modern day and age people rarely just disappear unless something bad has happened to them, or they didnt exist in the first place. Not being able to locate at all 240 cops smacks of something seriously wrong. Heaven help them if they are covering up deaths - if and when it comes out there would be a feeding frenzy for the lawyers.