N.O. cops reportedly stole Cadillacs from dealership

[secretforecaster]

I hope that this is NOT true. In the critical hours after Katrina, there were possible MANY more people that could have been saved!

http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/ ... tml#083577

N.O. cops reported to take Cadillacs from dealership
Foti investigating looting allegation


By James Varney
Staff writers


Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti's office confirmed Wednesday that it is investigating the alleged looting of a New Orleans car dealership by city police officers.


More than 200 vehicles were taken from the Sewell Cadillac Chevrolet dealership in the Central Business District, and in the most chaotic hours after Hurricane Katrina, some New Orleans Police Department officers reportedly pulled up outside the mobile command center at Harrah's casino in bright, shiny Cadillac SUVs.

The cars allegedly still had "2004" stickers in their windshields and "Sewell" medallions on the back. The fancy rides appeared at a time when a desperate force, having already lost scores of its marked units to floodwaters, was siphoning gas from abandoned vehicles scattered throughout the city, and officers claimed to be operating under emergency orders that allowed them to commandeer necessary supplies. Now, however, that tactic has drawn the attention of investigators.

"Yes, we are investigating although there have been no arrests so far," said Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Foti. "The investigation involves the activities at Sewell of both the New Orleans Police Department and another sort of city official whom I can't identify right now."

NOPD spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the force "welcomes any review" of its actions. At no time did any officer remove a car from the Sewell lot or showroom, he said.

"There were a number of vehicles stolen by individuals from that dealership and the police department recovered more than 100 of those vehicles," Defillo said. "A small fraction of those recovered were then used for essential purposes by officers whose vehicles had been damaged in the hurricane."

Defillo said late Wednesday the recovered vehicles were warehoused and returned to Sewell, and that NOPD brass had a "very positive" meeting with Sewell's owners last week. Yet in an interview Wednesday morning, Sewell President Doug Stead did not mention those arrangements and said that, to his knowledge, there had been no interaction between the dealership and the NOPD. He said the dealership had recovered a handful of cars - some from as far away as Baton Rouge - by working with its insurance companies.

The investigation into alleged looting comes at a time the NOPD is reeling from the resignation of Superintendent Eddie Compass on Tuesday and reports in The Times-Picayune that Compass and Mayor Ray Nagin repeated exaggerated tales of cruelty and violence in a New Orleans shattered by Katrina. Those inflated stories painted the city, already plunged into its severest test, in even worse hues to a global audience.

The tale of purloined Cadillacs is not the first allegation of improper confiscation of goods by NOPD officers. In Katrina's immediate aftermath, The Times-Picayune published photographs online of NOPD officers taking items such as DVDs from the Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas Street. And officers cleaned out a variety of stores, ranging from grocery stores like the A&P in the French Quarter to pharmacies to hardware to gun shops. In all those cases, officers said at the time, the police were either obtaining critical supplies for their own efforts or removing potentially attractive targets for looters.

There have been other allegations as well. CNN aired a story recently that said some officers stored stolen goods in a suite of rooms at the American Suites Hotel on Canal Street, a Compass and Defillo brushed aside as a dispute over some food and flashlights between officers and the hotel owner. And Chad Clayton of Clarence M. Kelley, a firm that has handled security at Children's Hospital since shortly after the storm, told The Times-Picayune that he stopped a couple of officers who were attempting to take a car from the hospital lots.

Clayton said the officers explained they had a partner who needed medical attention. He offered to them a ride, which they accepted. But along the way, they began acting "hinky," he said, and when they arrived at the destination, the friend wasn't there. At that point, Clayton said, "I told them, 'The ride's over, guys.' "

Whether Compass or Nagin ever issued an order that allowed officers to commandeer supplies remained unclear Wednesday. Wartelle said the city has not furnished investigators with a copy of any such document, and lawyers described the issue as "a legal gray area," noting that myriad questions arise concerning how the goods are seized and how they are used.

The orders, if they were issued, may have come not from the top but from district commanders, according to one source who has reviewed the matter, but Defillo declined to address the issue.

"I don't want to get into the specifics of authorization," he said. "That will all come out in the review which, as I said, we welcome."

Stead's own review began when he returned to the dealership eight days after the storm. He had heard while evacuated in Lafayette that police officers were patrolling the city in Cadillacs that carried $60,000 sticker prices. But the destruction of his dealership did not become apparent until he arrived back in New Orleans eight days after the storm.

"Someone had told me, 'We saw the police driving your cars,' and then when we got here the dealership was in total disarray, totally smashed up, every door was kicked in and we were looted," he said.

Nevertheless, Stead stressed that neither he nor any other Sewell employee requested a formal investigation from any law enforcement agency.

"The attorney general's office contacted us, we did not contact them," he said. "Please make that clear because I have to live here, you know."

All told, Stead said more than 200 vehicles were taken. Some of them were new, some were used; some were part of the dealership's inventory, some were customers' cars in for service.

Cadillacs were not the only high-end vehicles that vanished. A handful of Sewell Corvettes were also gone, and as recently as last week an NOPD officer at Harrah's was seen driving a black Corvette with a dealer's sticker in the windshield.

"They took anything that was drivable - they even hotwired a tractor we use to move cars around, a thing that can't go any faster than 12 miles per hour," Stead said of the looters.

It was Sewell's location - relatively high and completely dry at 701 Baronne St. - that made it a victim, Stead believes. Other dealerships, even those of high-end vehicles on Tulane Avenue, were engulfed by quickly rising.



Staff writer Gordon Russell contributed to this report.

[Lindaloo]

I am sure it is true. There were 10 New Orleans police officers on the 10th floor of a local hotel. They were looting at night. Bunch of sorry losers.

They need to be punished military style.

[arkess7]

i saw a show on A&E , City confidencal about a year ago.......and it was about some NO policeofficer killing some chic.......and it went into how corrupt the NO police dept. is...and that story was from the late 80's.....geez i thought they would have fired everyone and started over fresh.......but i guess not....

[streetsoldier]

i saw a show on A&E , City confidencal about a year ago.......and it was about some NO policeofficer killing some chic.......and it went into how corrupt the NO police dept. is...and that story was from the late 80's.....geez i thought they would have fired everyone and started over fresh.......but i guess not....

I saw the same story three days ago, and the latest date mentioned was 1995...they also made note that the NOPD was being considered for Federal oversight, due to the rampant "traditional" corruption in the force.

And one of the NO police officers showcased was a female officer who killed a Vietnamese family and two of their smallest children "execution-style" while robbing their restaurant business of $10,000...THEN returning to answer the call! What she didn't know was that two older children were hiding in a freezer and watched her.

[sunny]

i saw a show on A&E , City confidencal about a year ago.......and it was about some NO policeofficer killing some chic.......and it went into how corrupt the NO police dept. is...and that story was from the late 80's.....geez i thought they would have fired everyone and started over fresh.......but i guess not....

I saw the same story three days ago, and the latest date mentioned was 1995...they also made note that the NOPD was being considered for Federal oversight, due to the rampant "traditional" corruption in the force.

And one of the NO police officers showcased was a female officer who killed a Vietnamese family and two of their smallest children "execution-style" while robbing their restaurant business of $10,000...THEN returning to answer the call! What she didn't know was that two older children were hiding in a freezer and watched her.

Yep. Antoinette (I think) Williams. She also killed her partner.