Re: My personal theory of what went wrong in NO
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It's been stated above but I'll say it again.
Immediate control was at the local level. NO and LA politics have been hugely corrupt for decades, no secret there. There was no good leadership and chaos ensued quickly.
Contrast this with the aftermath of 9/11 (admittedly not as wide of scope as this disaster). Guliani had things under control. Bush and the federal government were footnotes the first few days of that tragedy in NY.
If NO had had a strong mayor, or Louisiana a strong governor, things would have gone much better.
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If one thing NOLA PD knows how to do it is control a crowd. They have a nice little 100K people drill for 2 weeks before Ash Wed. every year. I've been there, there is nothing like it and they do a very good job.
It was completely apparent late Monday night when the levee broke there was no way ANY local police force in the world could handle the situation. There was no jail, no central command and they were outnumbered by a huge number. 1/3 of the force was MIA on Tuesday night.
What was needed was National Guard on the street, enmass, and localized policing of shelters. Bush and the LA gov failed here completely and things got rapidly out of hand.
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