New Orleans Back to Normal....

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The_Shootist

The_Shootist

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Read on:

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/nation/4081036.html


Hey, if they are banging away in NO, then they aren't getting into shootouts in the Houston area.

Really, I know this will get me flamed, but I'm kinda sick & tired of the outrage directed at FEMA etc for the slow response to Katrina when I'm steadily coming to realize all that a faster response would have done was boost the rate of violence faster in Houston than it actually climbed - which was outrageous as it is :fire:
 
According to the Communist News Network, it's safer to be an American in Baghdad than in New Orleans:

* Five killed in latest New Orleans shootings
* Four Marines killed in Iraq battles
 
The_Shootist said:
boost the rate of violence faster in Houston than it actually climbed - which was outrageous as it is
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I hate to say it, I lived in NO for 4 years. I told everyone at work when I heard H town was going to take them in: "They have no idea what they have gotten themselves into. We're about to import 50,000 thugs and 2 little old ladies. That place is a gladiator academy and we're going to be bringing the 3rd 5th and 9th ward killers here and pray they behave. Mark my words: The crime rate will sky rocket."

Sadly, I wasn't wrong.

NO is the ONE city I ever felt uncomfortable in and I've lived in SF, Baltimore, DC, Houston, ATL and Detroit as well. Actually NO is the reason I started to shoot on a regular basis. Not because I wanted something fun to do ..... I thought it would be prudent to hit what I was aiming at.
 
July 29, 2006, 11:06AM
5 killed in overnight New Orleans shootings

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS — Four men were killed in one shooting and a fifth was gunned down in a separate incident hours later, the latest round of killings as the city struggles to rein in drug- and gang-related violence that has accompanied the recovery from Hurricane Katrina, police said today.

In mid-June, Gov. Kathleen Blanco sent the Louisiana National Guard and state police to New Orleans to help fight crime there after five teenagers were shot to death in a single attack.


However, the latest shootings did not happen in the high-crime areas police have been targeting in their drive to stamp out the violence, police Superintendent Warren Riley said Saturday morning.

The first four shootings took place late Friday in the Treme neighborhood, not far from the French Quarter.

The victims were three brothers — ages 16 and 21 — and their 39-year-old friend, Riley said. All four lived nearby.

Detectives were uncertain about the motive and were still looking for the assailants today.

The fifth shooting happened early today in the Gentilly neighborhood, an area that was severely flooded and which has been slowly rebuilding. Police said they found a man dead in a street after they received reports that shots had been fired.
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Was east of there camping on the coast. Wanted to go the French Quarter but decided it was not safe, and that was before I had CC license. Went instead down past Venice to the tip of LA on the coast...and was getting short on gas getting out of there. Man, was I nervous before finding a station that was open at 7 pm way south of NO. NO is on my list of never again.
 
As An Aside...

....and this is purely anecdotal, I don't have amy sold stats on it, but it seems like people getting their CHL in these parts has jumped considerably.

Used to be I could go over to the Texas City outdoor range pretty much anytime it was open on a weekend and set up in a pistol area. Now you have to get their EARLY!

I always bring my WASR10 (which I bought after Katrina/Rita) now as I'm uncertain if I'll get a spot in the pistol area (which is ALWAYS crowded, unless its 110 deg out or something :scrutiny: ) right away. The range masters tell me that 2-3 CHL pistol classes are run per morning on the weekends now to handle the local quantity in CHL applications. Pre-Katrina it was maybe one class every 2-3 weeks!

So the pistol part of the range is crowded frequently on weekends. The only good thing is you start to see more and more pretty upscale women out practicing with their snubbies or .380s, whereas before it was just the usual male riff-raff, like muself.

I haven't had much luck chatting them up however - when they see me lugging my AK to the rifle portion they give me kind of a hard stare as if they've never seen an evil assault weapon before :evil:
 
Missed one...came in lateer...make it 6 in 24hours.

Vast majority is due to drugs...much smaller habited area now, and as the FEMA money runs out and they come home, is a small turff with an over abundance of retail outlets.
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Houston: Keep what you have, send more Mexicn workers.
 
According to the Communist News Network, it's safer to be an American in Baghdad than in New Orleans:

* Five killed in latest New Orleans shootings
* Four Marines killed in Iraq battles
Click to expand...

that reminded me of something i saw once. i dont know how true it is but it said that if you are an American, then you have a better chance of getting harmed in washington DC then bagdhad.
 
* Five killed in latest New Orleans shootings
* Four Marines killed in Iraq battles
Click to expand...

That is a pretty interesting statement. If only 2500 of our military personal have died since the beginning of the Iraq war, how much more safe is the good old USA with approx. 30,000 killings a year?:confused:

I guess you would have to figure in the per capita ratio.:eek:
 
The Shootist said:
I'm kinda sick & tired of the outrage directed at FEMA etc for the slow response to Katrina
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The real reason you should be sick and tired of the media 'outrage' is because what happened in New Orleans wasn't FEMA's fault.

Take it from someone who's done disaster response in a half-dozen hurricanes - I'm not saying that FEMA covered themselves in glory or anything, but all FEMA can really do is support and augment local emergency response efforts. If the local organizations are corrupt, mismanaged, inadequate, incompetent and dysfunctional, then there's no way on the planet that a small agency like FEMA is going to be able to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
 
They have no idea what they have gotten themselves into. We're about to import 50,000 thugs and 2 little old ladies.
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Exactly - that and the fact that they'd stay where ever they went. I told the wife "I hope they don't bring many here because once they do we're stuck with 'em."

Hey, maybe that's why the cops are shooting twice as many as usual this year! :p
 
Take it from someone who's done disaster response in a half-dozen hurricanes - I'm not saying that FEMA covered themselves in glory or anything, but all FEMA can really do is support and augment local emergency response efforts.
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I concur. The locals and State agencies are supposed to have a plan, rehearse the plan, and execute that plan. None did. I also agree that FEMA reacted late and then over-reacted, wasting bundles of money in a panic.

TC
 
Hey 'Card!

Nod - thats true. Both Blanco and Nagin sure are candidates for "Idiots of the Century" over the absolute unpreparedness the state/city displayed with a Cat 5 a few hrs to the south of them :barf:
 
FEMA's major flaw wasn't one wrong move - it was a series of failures.
- They waited too long trying to coordinate and work through local officials in and around New Orleans, when they should have immediately realized that the locals were outrageously incompetent and simply run over them.
- Then they waited too long trying to get authorization and approval to railroad the local MTIC's (Morons Theoretically In Charge) - which is a common failing among bureaucrats.
- Then they shifted far too much of their limited assets into the lost cause of trying to help doomed New Orleans (in order to stem the developing PR nightmare) and ended up neglecting the rest of the Gulf Coast, where they actually could have been some help.

Whose fault is it? All of us, really. After 9/11, we all wanted increased Homeland Security funding for our local agencies, so the volunteer fire department in Podunk, Arkansas (or wherever) will be properly equipped if Abdul pops a tactical nuke down at the barbershop. That money had to come from somewhere, and "decentralizing disaster response" (read: giving more money/responsibility to local agencies) was a popular buzzword and seemed like a good idea at the time.

But the major fault always has, and always will lie with the people of the city of New Orleans. Over and over for decades they'd elected government officials who were corrupt, incompetent, ignorant, and in the end, criminally negligent. True to form however, rather than accepting responsibility for their long-term abject failure to take any measures whatsoever to protect themselves (which should ring a bell with all you gun-owners) they prefer to comfort themselves with the idea that "George Bush hates black people."
 
FEMA actually did as well as they ever do, you'll always have incompetence in a government organization, especially a bureacracy like FEMA. Though I can't stand Nagin and Blanco for other reasons, they can't be blamed for NO either. I remember them specifically telling the citizens the weekend before to get OUT! Some chose not to, end of story. People who depend on Daddy Gov. to help them out in a bad situation are just asking for the Darwin theory to play itself out.;)
 
True...we prefer it that way...if it were like every place else, we'd not bother rebuilding.

Life wa kind of sweet from Oct. to about March in the undestroyed/unflooded sections...quiet, peaceful, very little violent crime (even with a population est. at 140-160K).

But now comes the reverse migration...and with a much smaller footprint, some fierce competion of the drug market is driving the murder rate. A city of neighborhoods, with small "gangs" in each, now that the neighborhood thugs are pressed together in a smaller area, have some hot-spots where murder is a daily event.

So...yep, had 5 people killed...at 4am at a major drug corner of the city....booked a 19 year old for that shooting, but proof is thin.

ANother sign of the times....with the court system in ruins and nearly no public defenders, a judge has filed a motion...either give 6,000 prisioners a trial or he'll let them go come August. Sounds pretty terrible...but so is being held without trial for as much as a year.
 
I concur. The locals and State agencies are supposed to have a plan, rehearse the plan, and execute that plan. None did. I also agree that FEMA reacted late and then over-reacted, wasting bundles of money in a panic.
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they did. their plan was to cry for help.
 
Well, normal for N'Awlins (yes, I know nobody FROM Noo Orleans says it that way) is a bit different from normal for most folks. That used to be a good thing -- maybe it will be again. :D
 
How dare you....

imply that they didnt have a plan in NO. They had a great plan involving superheros, the planet krypton, and a large waffle. I believe the plan was written up in a several hundred page document and promptly used to prop up a desk leg. It did make the desk nice and level.

So, cut Chocolate Rae a break, He did the best he could as he high tailed it out of the city. I mean, how much can one do when fleeing?

I mean, he knew the old saying.... I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to outrun you!
 
Whose fault is it? All of us, really. After 9/11, we all wanted increased Homeland Security funding for our local agencies, so the volunteer fire department in Podunk, Arkansas (or wherever) will be properly equipped if Abdul pops a tactical nuke down at the barbershop. That money had to come from somewhere, and "decentralizing disaster response" (read: giving more money/responsibility to local agencies) was a popular buzzword and seemed like a good idea at the time.
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I hate to burst you bubble, but the majority of the funding and effort in Homeland Security has been focused on law enforcement, not disaster response. Fire and EMS haven't gotten any more funding since 9/11 than they were before from various programs like FIRE act, and the majority of the money is spent on useful stuff like bunker gear, radios and apparatus. Federal grants have always gone disproportionately to law enforcement, primarily from politicians trying to appear "tough" on crime.

But it's not all bad. There has been a commitment on the part of law enforcement agencies to play well with other responders under a unified command structure that leads to more efficient and effective disaster response. Giving more responsibility to local responders is good, as long as you give them the support and funding to meet those responsibilities. The fact is that federal response has always had a 24-72 hour lag time that local agencies have to be able to handle on their own. They do so with mutual aid agreements, Incident Command Systems, and federal grants for capability that exceeds local funding.

For instance I'm a member of a county Hazmat team that is the primary response agency for hazardous materials incidents for the surrounding counties. The member are provided by and paid by the member fire departments. But the hazmat suits, instrumentation and all the toys it takes to operate safely at a hazmat incident are paid for by the federal government so we can afford to provide that service to the surrounding community. They are not cheap, some of the instruments are worth more than my annual salary. What I'm saying is that in general the concept works. We offer alot more value for your federal dollar than a dedicated federal hazmat team could offer and in a shorter time frame. What I'm saying is, don't condemn the concept because of individual failures.

Tex
 
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