Issue 347
September 30, 2005
Fear
Exceeded Crime's Reality in New Orleans
By JIM DWYER
and CHRISTOPHER DREW
NEW ORLEANS,
Sept. 25 - After the storm came the siege. In the days after Hurricane Katrina,
terror from crimes seen and unseen, real and rumored, gripped New Orleans. The
fears changed troop deployments, delayed medical evacuations, drove police
officers to quit, grounded helicopters. Edwin P. Compass III, the police
superintendent, said that tourists - the core of the city's economy - were
being robbed and raped on streets that had slid into anarchy.
The mass
misery in the city's two unlit and uncooled primary shelters, the convention
center and the Superdome, was compounded, officials said, by gangs that were
raping women and children.
A month
later, a review of the available evidence now shows that some, though not all,
of the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little
more than figments of frightened imaginations, the product of chaotic
circumstances that included no reliable communications, and perhaps the residue
of the longstanding raw relations between some police officers and members of
the public.
Beyond
doubt, the sense of menace had been ignited by genuine disorder and violence
that week. Looting began at the moment the storm passed over New Orleans, and
it ranged from base thievery to foraging for the necessities of life.
Police
officers said shots were fired for at least two nights at a police station on
the edge of the French Quarter. The manager of a hotel on Bourbon Street said
he saw people running through the streets with guns. At least one person was
killed by a gunshot at the convention center, and a second at the Superdome. A
police officer was shot in Algiers during a confrontation with a looter.
It is still
impossible to say if the city experienced a wave of murder because autopsies
have been performed on slightly more than 10 percent of the 885 dead.
On
Wednesday, however, Dr. Louis Cataldie, the state's medical incident commander
for Hurricane Katrina victims, said that only six or seven deaths appear to
have been the result of homicides. He also said that people returning to homes
in the damaged region have begun finding the bodies of relatives.
Superintendent
Compass, one of the few seemingly authoritative sources during the days after
the storm, resigned Tuesday for reasons that remain unclear. His departure came
just as he was coming under criticism from The New Orleans Times-Picayune,
which had questioned many of his public accounts of extreme violence.
In an
interview last week with The New York Times, Superintendent Compass said that
some of his most shocking statements turned out to be untrue. Asked about
reports of rapes and murders, he said: "We have no official reports to
document any murder. Not one official report of rape or sexual assault."
On Sept. 4,
however, he was quoted in The Times about conditions at the convention center,
saying: "The tourists are walking around there, and as soon as these
individuals see them, they're being preyed upon. They are beating, they are
raping them in the streets."
Those
comments, Superintendent Compass now says, were based on secondhand reports. The
tourists "were walking with their suitcases, and they would have their
clothes and things taken," he said last week. "No rapes that we can
quantify."
Rumors
Affected Response
A full
chronicle of the week's crimes, actual and reported, may never be possible
because so many basic functions of government ceased early in the week,
including most public safety record-keeping. The city's 911 operators left
their phones when water began to rise around their building.
To assemble
a picture of crime, both real and perceived, The New York Times interviewed
dozens of evacuees in four cities, police officers, medical workers and city
officials. Though many provided concrete, firsthand accounts, others passed
along secondhand information or rumor that after multiple tellings had ossified
into what became accepted as fact.
What became
clear is that the rumor of crime, as much as the reality of the public
disorder, often played a powerful role in the emergency response. A team of
paramedics was barred from entering Slidell, across Lake Pontchartrain from New
Orleans, for nearly 10 hours based on a state trooper's report that a mob of
armed, marauding people had commandeered boats. It turned out to be two men
escaping from their flooded streets, said Farol Champlin, a paramedic with the
Acadian Ambulance Company.
On another
occasion, the company's ambulances were locked down after word came
that a
firehouse in Covington had been looted by armed robbers of all its water - a
report that proved totally untrue, said Aaron Labatt, another paramedic.
A contingent
of National Guard troops was sent to rescue a St. Bernard Parish deputy sheriff
who radioed for help, saying he was pinned down by a sniper. Accompanied by a
SWAT team, the troops surrounded the area. The shots turned out to be the
relief valve on a gas tank that popped open every few minutes, said Maj. Gen.
Ron Mason of the 35th Infantry Division of the Kansas National Guard.
"It's
part of human nature," General Mason said. "When you get one or two
reports, it echoes around the community."
Faced with
reports that 400 to 500 armed looters were advancing on the town of Westwego,
two police officers quit on the spot. The looters never appeared, said the
Westwego police chief, Dwayne Munch.
"Rumors
could tear down an entire army," Chief Munch said.
During six
days when the Superdome was used as a shelter, the head of the New Orleans
Police Department's sex crimes unit, Lt. David Benelli, said he and his
officers lived inside the dome and ran down every rumor of rape or atrocity. In
the end, they made two arrests for attempted sexual assault, and concluded that
the other attacks had not happened.
"I
think it was urban myth," said Lieutenant Benelli, who also heads the
police union. "Any time you put 25,000 people under one roof, with no
running water, no electricity and no information, stories get told."
Crimes of
Opportunity
The actual,
serious crime began, in the recollection of many, before the catastrophic
failure of the levees flooded the city, and much of it consisted of crimes of
opportunity rather than assault. On the morning of Monday, Aug. 29, in the half
hour or so that the eye of Hurricane Katrina fell on the city - an illusory
moment of drawn breath, sunshine and fair breezes - the looters struck, said
Capt. Anthony W. Canatella, the police commander in the Sixth District.
Using a
chain hitched to a car, they tore open the steel doors at the back of a pawn
shop called Cash America on Claiborne Avenue. "Payday Advances to
350," read a sign where the marquee would have been.
"There
was nothing in there you could sustain your life with," Captain Canatella
said. "There's nothing in there but guns and power tools."
The Sixth
District - like most of New Orleans, a checkerboard of wealth and poverty - was
the scene of heavy looting, with much of the stealing confined to the
lower-income neighborhoods. A particular target was a Wal-Mart store on
Tchoupitoulas Street, bordering the city's elegant Garden District and built on
the site of a housing project that had been torn down.
The looters
told a reporter from The Times that they followed police officers into the
store after they broke it open, and police commanders said their officers had
been given permission to take what they needed from the store to survive. A
reporter from The Times-Picayune said he saw police officers grabbing DVD's.
A frenzy of
stealing began, and the fruits of it could be seen last week in three
containers parked outside the Sixth District police station. Inside were goods
recovered from stashes placed by looters in homes throughout the neighborhood,
said Captain Canatella, most but not all still bearing Wal-Mart stickers.
"Not
one piece of educational material was taken - the best-selling books are all
sitting right where they were left," Captain Canatella said. "But
every $9 watch in the store is gone."
One of the
officers who went to the Wal-Mart said the police did not try to stop people
from taking food and water. "People sitting outside the Wal-Mart with groceries
waiting for a ride, I just let them sit there," said Sgt. Dan Anderson of
the Sixth District. "If they had electronics, I just threw it back in
there."
Three auto
parts stores were also looted. In a house on Clara Street, Sergeant Anderson picked
his way through a soggy living room, where car parts, still in their boxes,
were strewn about. On the wall above a couch, someone had written
"Looters" with spray paint.
"The
nation's realizing what kind of criminals we have here," Sergeant Anderson
said.
Among the
evacuees, there was gratitude for efforts by the police and others to help them
get out of town, but it was clear that some members of the public did not have
a high opinion of the New Orleans Police Department, with numerous people citing
cases of corruption and violence a decade ago.
"Don't
get me wrong, there was bad stuff going on in the streets, but the police is
dirty," said Michael Young, who had worked as a waiter in the Riverwalk
development.
French
Quarter Is Spared
As the storm
winds died down that Monday, small groups that had evacuated from poor
neighborhoods as far away as the Lower Ninth Ward passed through the historic
French Quarter, heading for shelter at the convention center.
"Some
were pushing little carts with their belongings and holding onto their
kids," said Capt. Kevin B. Anderson, the French Quarter's police
commander. He said his officers gave food, water and rides. "That also
served another purpose," he said. "That when they came through, they
didn't cause any problems."
The jewelry
and antique shops in the French Quarter were basically left untouched, though
squatters moved into a few of the hotels. Only a small grocery store and
drugstores at the edge of the quarter were hit by looters, he said. From behind
the locked doors of the Royal Sonesta hotel on Bourbon Street, Hans Wandfluh,
the general manager, said he had watched passers-by who seemed to be up to no
good. "We heard gunshots fired," Mr. Wandfluh said. "We saw
people running with guns."
At dusk on
Aug. 29, looters broke windows along Canal Street and swarmed into drugstores,
shoe stores and electronics shops, Captain Anderson said. Some tried, without
success, to break into banks, and others sought to take money from A.T.M.'s.
The
convention center, without water, air-conditioning, light or any authority
figures, was recalled by many as a place of great suffering. Many heard rumors
of crime, and saw sinister behavior, but few had firsthand knowledge of
violence, which they often said they believed had taken place in another part
of the half-mile-long center.
"I saw
Coke machines being torn up - each and every one of them was busted on the
second floor," said Percy McCormick, a security guard who spent four
nights in the convention center and was interviewed in Austin, Tex.
Capt.
Jeffrey Winn, the commander of the SWAT team, said its members rushed into the
convention center to chase muzzle flashes from weapons to root out groups of
men who had taken over some of the halls. No guns were recovered.
State
officials have said that 10 people died at the Superdome and 24 died around the
convention center - 4 inside and 20 nearby. While autopsies have not been
completed, so far only one person appears to have died from gunshot wounds at
each facility.
In another
incident, Captain Winn and Lt. Dwayne Scheuermann, the assistant SWAT
commander, said they both shot and wounded a man brandishing a gun near people
who had taken refuge on an Interstate highway. Captain Winn said the SWAT team
also exchanged gunfire with looters on Tchoupitoulas Street.
The violence
that seemed hardest to explain were the reports of shots being fired at rescue
and repair workers, including police officers and firefighters, construction
and utility workers.
Cellphone
repair workers had to abandon work after shots from the Fischer housing project
in Algiers, Captain Winn said. His team swept the area three times. On one
sweep, federal agents found an AK-47 semiautomatic rifle, Captain Winn said.
For military
officials, who flew rescue missions around the city, the reports that people
were shooting at helicopters turned out to be mistaken. "We investigated
one incident and it turned out to have been shooting on the ground, not at the
helicopter," said Maj. Mike Young of the Air Force.
* * * * *
EDITORIAL
Fighting
for our values
THE
CONVICTION OF Pvt. Lynndie R. England for abusing Iraqi inmates was a foregone
conclusion. What remains an open question, unfortunately, is the extent of the
damage done to America's image abroad by the continued allegations of cruelty
and mistreatment at the hands of U.S. soldiers.
The pictures
of England holding a prisoner on a leash and grinning at naked detainees who
were forced to form a pyramid at Abu Ghraib prison were as sickening as they
were powerful. England's conviction Monday on six of seven counts of conspiracy
and mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners makes her the ninth reservist to plead
guilty or be convicted of crimes at Abu Ghraib. She was sentenced to three
years in prison.
Pentagon
officials blamed a few rogue soldiers when the pictures were published last
year. But the Army has since investigated hundreds of charges of abuse of
prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. More than a "few bad apples" were
involved.
We now know,
for example, that Abu Ghraib was not the only venue for mistreating prisoners.
Men freed from custody at Guantanamo Bay have provided credible tales of abuse.
Last week, Human Rights Watch released a report containing firsthand reports
that members of the 82nd Airborne Division routinely tortured detainees in 2003
and early 2004 near the Iraqi city of Fallouja. Capt. Ian Fishback and two
sergeants, formerly of the elite 82nd Airborne, said prisoners taken during the
hard-fought siege of Fallouja were kicked and beaten, their bones broken and
eyes doused with irritants. Equally disturbing, Fishback said his reports of
wrongdoing were ignored by higher-ranking officers.
That refusal
to act, and the conclusion of an earlier Army inquiry that top generals in Iraq
were innocent of leadership lapses that allowed the Abu Ghraib crimes, argue
for an independent investigation into the treatment of detainees. Congress
should be demanding one, if not conducting one itself.
There are
encouraging signs of congressional unease, even within the president's own
party, with the administration's policies. Several U.S. senators who are
military veterans — including Republicans John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey O.
Graham of South Carolina and John W. Warner of Virginia — understand the damage
the detainee abuse charges have caused, especially in the Muslim world.
McCain said
Sunday that he and the other two senators support an amendment to a defense
bill specifically requiring the military to abide by the Geneva Convention,
which outlaws torture. The Bush administration has always said it supports the
Geneva Convention, but it has clouded the issue with the appalling claim that
the convention does not apply to some prisoners, including the "unlawful
combatants" it claims are held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Geneva
Convention protects U.S. military men and women when they are captured — one
reason many generals protested the administration's original rules on the
mistreatment of prisoners. There is also a more idealistic reason to oppose the
administration's lax policy on torture: It abrogates American values.
The Abu
Ghraib photographs and subsequent detailing of wrongdoing by military and
civilian interrogators and guards at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan are
among the most shameful chapters of this war on terror. Winning this war will
require time and perseverance. Success demands clearer rules for prosecution
and better training of those we ask to enforce those rules.
* * * * *
Parmalat
founder fraud trial opens
MILAN, Italy
(CNN) -- The founder and former boss of Parmalat has appeared in a Milan court
in the first major trial over the Italian dairy giant's collapse almost two
years ago in one of Europe's biggest corporate fraud scandals.
Calisto Tanzi
and 15 others face charges of market rigging, false auditing and misleading
Italy's stock market regulator and investors.
Dozens of
those investors gathered outside the Milan courthouse hearing the trial as the
proceedings opened. Tanzi arrived one hour late and assumed a seat in the front
row.
One of his
lawyers said he had been caught in traffic. After about an hour in court, Tanzi
left.
The trial
was adjourned to December 2 to allow the court time to consider a request from
investors to join a civil suit linked to the criminal case.
Also on
trial are three bank executives and two auditors from the Italian branch of
Deloitte & Touche and the former Italian branch of Grant Thornton.
One of the
defendants, Giovanni Bonici -- former chairman of Parmalat Venezuela and the
Cayman Islands-based subsidiary at the center of the bankruptcy -- was one of
the few of the other accused to appear in the court.
"I am
as much of a victim as the investors," he was quoted as saying by the ANSA
news agency.
The
defendants face up to 10 years in prison if found guilty.
Defense
lawyers said on Tuesday that Tanzi would cooperate during the trial.
"He
knows what his responsibilities are," Giampiero Biancolella, one of Tanzi's
attorneys, told the Associated Press.
"What
we want is to help reconstruct faithfully what happened at Parmalat so the
judge can make a decision based on that reconstruction."
The Parmalat
scandal, dubbed "Europe's Enron", erupted in December 2003 when the
company admitted that an account worth nearly euro 4 billion ($4.8 billion) it
claimed it held in a Bank of America account in the Cayman Islands did not
exist.
Months of
investigation followed, uncovering a tangle of offshore companies and accounts.
Prosecutors
said Parmalat's old management created them to paper over a gaping debt of
nearly euro14 billion ($16.9 billion).
Authorities
declared the company bankrupt and overnight, tens of thousands of stocks and
bonds holders were left holding worthless paper.
Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi called an emergency cabinet meeting in the
wake of the collapse, but measures agreed then have still not been passed into
law.
Blame
As the trial
began, Tanzi's lawyers submitted a list of witnesses to Judge Luisa Ponti which
included the heads of such banks as Capitalia and Mediobanca, as well as market
regulators Consob and the Bank of Italy.
Reports had
claimed Tanzi would try to shift blame for the scandal on to the banks, but
Biancolella denied that.
"We
cannot transform ourselves from the accused into accusers," he said.
The banks
have denied any wrongdoing.
Earlier this
year Tanzi asked for forgiveness from those who suffered as a result of the
scandal. But Paolo Vivian, a pensioner who lost euro 25,000, was not impressed.
"It is
ridiculous, he should have thought about it before the fraud," he said.
"He could have spared us his apology because no-one has accepted it."
As
compensation, Vivian received shares in the new Parmalat worth around 10
percent of his original investment.
In June, 11
others including three of Parmalat's former chief financial officers, accepted
plea bargains that saw them sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for
their parts in the fraud.
A fast track
trial of two accountants from Grant Thornton began in January.
A
government-appointed administrator, Enrico Bondi, now runs Parmalat. He has
launched a series of lawsuits against banks aimed at recouping some of the
investors' money lost in the crash.
He also
instigated a tough restructuring of the company that has seen it shake off the
scandal and remain a prime player in the Italian dairy market.
Gabriel
Kahn, Rome correspondent of the Wall Street Journal, told CNN:
"Parmalat
has come back stronger than many people might have expected.
"The
real hit was when the scandal broke two years ago so I'm not sure putting Tanzi
on trial now will hurt the brand. It may even help by putting it back in the
news."
Shares in
Parmalat were suspended shortly after the collapse, but are due to be relisted
next month. Anaylsts said they would be indicated to open between euro 2.38 and
euro 2.45.
* * * * *
Anna
Nicole's Case Goes to Supreme Court
By THE
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- The Supreme Court shed its staid image Tuesday, giving stripper-turned
Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith a new chance at a piece of the fortune of her
90-year-old late husband.
The court
said it would hear arguments early next year as part of Smith's effort to
collect as much as $474 million from the estate of J. Howard Marshall II. The oil
tycoon married her in 1994 when he was 89 and she was 26.
The case
promises to be the sexiest of the nine-month term which begins next week.
''She's very
excited. She will be attending arguments, there's no question about that,''
Smith's lawyer, Howard K. Stern, said in a telephone interview from Vermont
where the television reality star is filming a movie.
At issue for
the court is a relatively mundane technical issue: when may federal courts hear
claims that are also involved state probate proceedings. But the facts are
eye-catching.
The 1993
Playmate of the Year and self-described ''blonde bombshell'' claims her husband
promised her millions but that his scheming son cut her out of the estate.
The son, E.
Pierce Marshall, said that a Texas court had found Smith's claim frivolous and
that a jury determined he did nothing wrong. ''This is one small step in a
process and we intend to prevail so that my father's wishes can be honored,''
he said in a statement.
His father,
one of Texas' wealthiest men, died in 1995, setting off a nasty legal fight.
An initial
$474 million award for Smith was reduced to about $89 million, then thrown out
altogether by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The
appeals court said that a Texas probate court's decision that the oilman's son
was his sole heir should stand.
The appeals
court decision, that federal courts in California never had jurisdiction,
erased a lower court finding that she was entitled to compensatory and punitive
damages on grounds that Marshall's son tried to keep her from receiving money
from his father's estate.
Smith, whose
real name is Vickie Lynn Marshall, had received more than $6 million in gifts
from her late husband, but was not included in his will, justices were told by
E. Pierce Marshall's attorneys.
Smith's
attorneys told justices in a filing that Marshall's son ''devotes nearly half
his brief to manipulating the record to cast (Vickie) in a bad light,'' and that
J. Howard Marshall intended to provide for his wife throughout her life.
The Supreme
Court agreed to hear the case without awaiting the opinion of the new chief
justice. The Senate is expected to vote on John Roberts' nomination later this
week. The eight justices, including retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,
picked that case to hear out of about 1,900 appeals.
The case is
Vickie Lynn Marshall v. E. Pierce Marshall, 04-1544.
* * * * *