New Orleans' police chief defends out-of-ammo force

New Orleans’ police chief fiercely defended his officers following claims that they deserted in droves, leaving the city to rapists and looters in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Superintendent Eddie Compass said his officers held their ground without food, water and even ammunition.

“In the annals of history, no police department in the history of the world was asked to do what we (were) asked,” Compass said.

Two police officers killed themselves. Another was shot in the head. Compass said 150 had to be rescued from eight feet of water and others had picked up infections from walking through the murky soup of chemicals and pollutants in flooded areas of the city.

Compass denied claims that scores of police officers had deserted. Some officers had abandoned their jobs, he said, but he did not know how many. He said the department was doing a roll call.

At a news conference earlier in New Orleans, Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley said between 400 and 500 officers on the 1,600-member police force were unaccounted for.

Some lost their homes and some are looking for their families. “Some simply left because they said they could not deal with the catastrophe,” Riley said.

The officers still on the beat in the flooded city are being cycled off duty and given five-day leave periods in Las Vegas and Atlanta, where they will be offered counselling, officials say.

Compass, visiting the emergency operations centre in Baton Rouge on his first trip outside New Orleans since the storm hit, said New Orleans had police officers “who made the ultimate sacrifice for this city”.

“We had no food. We had no water. We ran out of ammunition. We had no vehicles. We were fighting in waist deep water that was infected and polluted,” he said.

Compass said the looting and criminal activity involved a small group of people preying on the weak after being thrust into evacuation areas with regular citizens.

On reports that police stood by while women were raped and people were beaten, the chief responded: “Are you crazy? We did everything that was humanly possible to protect human life.”

Without communication or lights, officers sometimes had to follow the traces of light made by fired weapons and physically wrest the guns from individuals’ hands, Compass said. He said he did not know how many people were shot by police since Katrina came ashore.

When asked what he thought of federal and state officials’ response to the storm, Compass did not offer criticism.

“I’m not a bureaucrat. I’m a police chief. Those type of questions I don’t really answer,” he said. “We needed more resources, but those resources didn’t come.”