Nasty Little Man

Big UnEasy

New Orleans police kill man who swung knife

I'd be the first to let loose on police misconduct or abuse, but the initial accounts give this the appearance of a justified shooting. The police have to be able to defend themselves. This will get some attention, though, more than usual, since it occurred in N'awlins. Presumably, tensions are still high amongst the 100,000 or so folks who are there, and it can't be easy being an officer under those circumstances. CTV has quoted some witnesses who say that the man was not endangering anyone. Details are murky. As the CTV article points out, it is worth asking the question of whether or not the NO police can handle the job right now:

About 80 per cent of the city's police officers lost their homes in the hurricane, and many are still living in temporary barracks aboard barges. Critics have questioned how fit the officers are to do their jobs, considering the stress many are already dealing with.

"Police officers working regular shift work can have a degradation of their capacity to make split-second decisions and make appropriate choices in regular circumstances," criminologist David Klinger told ABC. "So you can only imagine what it must be for those men and women down there who are still trying to do the job."

It's difficult to get a handle on just what, exactly, is going on in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf Coast and the government's response to it. We all know that all levels of government screwed up the initial response. Once that became water under the bridge, so to speak, the government had the opportunity to do right by the people of the region by providing leadership in the rebuilding.

By all accounts, though, that hasn't happened. On December 11, the New York Times wrote an editorial on the Death of an American City:

We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.
...
At this moment the reconstruction is a rudderless ship. There is no effective leadership that we can identify. How many people could even name the president's liaison for the reconstruction effort, Donald Powell? Lawmakers need to understand that for New Orleans the words ''pending in Congress'' are a death warrant requiring no signature.

The rumbling from Washington that the proposed cost of better levees is too much has grown louder. Pretending we are going to do the necessary work eventually, while stalling until the next hurricane season is upon us, is dishonest and cowardly. Unless some clear, quick commitments are made, the displaced will have no choice but to sink roots in the alien communities where they landed.

This prompted a fair amount of conversation on the lefty talk shows, and Congress approved the money to rebuild the levees to pre-Katrina strength. (We saw how well they worked.)

The Chicago Tribune on Monday expressed a measure of hope and preached patience:

The president, the Louisiana governor, the mayor of New Orleans and others have promised that New Orleans will rise again, better than before. But they haven't said when. The answer, at least for now, is: Not soon. Rebuilding on this scale takes planning and deliberation. Doing it right is far more important than doing it fast.

That is not the answer that many want to hear. Doomsayers are writing New Orleans' epitaph, suggesting that Congress and the Bush administration are abandoning a great American city. A Nov. 13 editorial headline in the New Orleans Times-Picayune wailed: "Forgotten Already."

Nonsense. The city isn't forgotten. FEMA has billions in the bank earmarked for flood relief. So far, a little more than half of the $62 billion in federal Katrina relief has been spent. In recent days, the White House asked for another $1.5 billion to rebuild the levees to pre-Katrina strength. Before adjourning for the year, Congress allocated billions, including grant money that will be used to compensate those who did not have flood insurance. There's another $8 billion in tax breaks for businesses damaged or destroyed by those hurricanes.

The impulse to move quickly is natural. People are suffering. But as this page said in the first days after the disaster, we now have the opportunity to build a smarter--smaller--New Orleans.

The Big Queasy

So, it's hard to say where this is going. It's important that the public doesn't forget about our friends in the Gulf Coast.

posted by Kinder Gentler Little Man @ 10:15 AM