By James Varney
and Trymaine Lee
Staff writers
National Guard soldiers and State Police troopers rolled back into New Orleans Tuesday, less than a year after chaos unleashed by Hurricane Katrina first called them to calm an unruly city.
Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Superintendent Warren Riley said the move had been in the works since March, but the arrival of armed soldiers three days after the city was rocked by the murder of five teenagers cast an unwelcome spotlight on resurgent crime that some officials fear threatens the fragile reconstruction from the storm and its catastrophic flooding.
In a pep talk to the soldiers and troopers who gathered mid-day at the Port of New Orleans headquarters, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said as much, hammering home the point that if a criminal element gains a toehold in New Orleans the hopes of an economic recovery will dim.
“I call on you to assure that crime has no role in our recovery,” Blanco told an auditorium packed with nearly 100 Louisiana guardsmen and 50 state police troopers. “Criminals, hear me loud and hear me clearly: there is law and order in New Orleans.”
With financial assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency coming to an end and school letting out for the summer in neighborhoods where people have relocated, police are expecting an, “influx of people, not necessarily criminals,” Riley said. It is that return, not the killers capable of gunning down the five youths early Saturday morning as they were driving in Central City, that is problematic for authorities, he said. “It’s going to be a long, hot summer,” Riley warned.
With more people returning, an already thin force would find itself dangerously short-handed, Riley said. Having armed soldiers fan out on patrol in mostly deserted stretches of the city, and using the troopers to assist in neighborhoods along the Mississippi River from roughly the Industrial Canal to the Central Business District, will allow the NOPD to reassign officers to crime fighting duties in more populated areas.
The National Guard troops, whom officers noted had all volunteered for the assignment, will be concentrated in the NOPD’s 3rd, 5th and 7th Districts, Riley said, giving commanders at least 45 officers to shift to other zones. Those districts areas include the city’s worst-hit neighborhoods, including the 9th Ward, eastern New Orleans, Lakeview and Gentilly.
Guard officers said their force will swell to 300 in the near future, possibly as soon as Wednesday. In his brief remarks to the soldiers and troopers, Riley said their mission was crucial, if not as sexy as they might like.
It is NOPD officers who will handle the brunt of the city’s street crime, he said. “We’ll be in the hot spots, although I’m sure some of you would like to be,” Riley said as many soldiers in the audience chuckled.
For now, the soldiers will reside in the flood-damaged Jackson Barracks, the National Guard’s former headquarters in New Orleans, as officers work to line up hotel rooms. Tuesday afternoon, state Sen. Julie Quinn, R-Metairie announced she and her husband, hotelier F. Patrick Quinn III, would provide 750 rooms for the soldiers for as long as they are needed.
Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, spokesman for the National Guard in Louisiana, said he hopes troopers won’t be needed in the city for long, but that no one is setting a deadline.
“What we want to do is work ourselves out of a job, but we’ll stay as long as we have to,” he said.
Schneider and the other soldiers arrived in the city just before noon in a scorching heat, and parked their Humvees and other vehicles in rows in a lot across from the Convention Center. Soldiers milled about for a while, most of them carrying shotguns which, along with a sidearm, is the standard weaponry on a law enforcement detail, said Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux, deputy commander of the force. The schedule of the soldiers’ patrols and roadblocks remains uncertain, but Thibodeaux said they are prepared — and indeed, are expecting — to be active 24 hours a day.
A handful of soldiers had M-16 machine guns slung over their shoulder, but that gun, which can fire a round up to a mile, isn’t the best weapon in confined areas or in close combat, soldiers said. Hopefully, no action will result, but Guard officers and Riley noted that, on patrol or at roadblocks, soldiers will have live ammunition.
“They have pull-over authority, they are locked and loaded, and they are authorized to use deadly force,” Riley said.
One step Blanco and Nagin said is pending that they hope could sharply reduce such incidents is a juvenile curfew. While the details have not been finalized, local and state government officials are all on board. Nagin said Tuesday the only holdup was, “finding the beds,” but that problem appeared solved later in the day when Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman said he would use an administrative building on Tulane Avenue to house curfew violators.
For all the insistence that the arrival of troops was long planned, the horrific weekend massacre — the city’s worst since five people were slain in a house on North Roman Street in 1995 — was clearly in people’s minds. Soldiers said they have been following the news.
“I think we’ll be a good reminder for the United States that there’s still a lot of work to be done here,” said Sgt. Carlos Rossell, a New Orleans native.
Certainly some New Orleanians living near the most recent violence welcomed the martial reinforcements.
“I think we need a little help,” said Desi Bradford, a concerned Central City resident who does everything from raise money to bury neighbors to mentoring neighborhood youth. “But I still feel like we need to take care of home first. I think the National Guard should be a supporter of the Sixth District police. They should come and reinforce, not take over. Here in the 6th, we’re trying to take care of our own.”
On a stoop just yards from where the victims of Saturday’s massacre were found sat 73-year-old Clarence Joseph. He said he welcomes anything that helps the community get a handle on the violence and the wayward children, “with no home training.”
“Nothing wrong with them guardsmen being here,” Joseph said. “Being here, protecting our state, its beautiful.”
Less certain is how photos and news clips of armed troops patrolling the streets, as they did in the first wild weeks after Katrina, will play in the national consciousness. The image could undercut efforts to nurse tourists back because it recalls the city’s darkest hours, when U.S. Army soldiers, heavily armed NOPD units, and sundry other forces from around the country walked New Orleans shattered or underwater neighborhoods, searching for trapped survivors and dealing with looters and random gunshots.
Reacting to the national headlines the Saturday killings generated, the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau issued two pages of “talking points” Tuesday to combat the notion that outlaws rule the streets. The letter notes the murders happened, “at 4:00 a.m. in the sparsely populated Central City neighborhood,” and that visitors should not be afraid.
“The murders have no bearing on any crime or safety issues in the areas of the city frequented by tourists,” the Bureau wrote.
When asked directly, both Blanco and Nagin sidestepped the question of how much harm the return of soldiers could inflict. Their concern, they said, was not with outside opinions but law and order in New Orleans. Nevertheless, their remarks acknowledged the potentially mortal blow an explosion of bloody crime would inflict on the city’s recovery.
“I’m not taking any chances,” Nagin said. “This city is open for business and is safe for tourists.”
The normally ebullient mayor appeared subdued Tuesday, both in his remarks at the Port and in an impromptu press conference with reporters where he eschewed his trademark banter. He thanked Blanco for her, “quick” reaction to his request and said the soldiers should adapt quickly to New Orleans since, “a lot of you have been here before.”
“I think it’s an issue of focus, trying to stem this tide we have right now,” the mayor said. “Once we get through to the fall, we’ll be O.K., but we’re stretching our resources a little thin right now.”
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