Gretna Sucks

Sunday September 11th 2005
ANDREW BUNCOMBE in Washington

A LOUISIANA police chief has admitted that he ordered his officers to block a bridge over the Mississippi river and force escaping evacuees back into the chaos and danger of New Orleans.

Witnesses said the officers regularly fired their guns above the heads of the terrified, mainly black, people to drive them back and "protect" their own suburbs.

Two paramedics who were attending a conference in the city and then stayed to help those affected by the hurricane, said the officers told them they did not want their community "becoming another New Orleans" or "another Superdome".

The tired and desperate evacuees were forced to trudge back into the city which they had just left. "It was a real eye-opener," said Larry Bradshaw, 49, a paramedic from San Francisco. "I believe it was racism. It was callousness, it was cruelty."

Mr Bradshaw said the police blocked off the road on the Thursday and Friday after Hurricane Katrina struck on Monday August 29. He and his wife Lorrie Slonsky, also a paramedic, had sheltered with others in the Hotel Monteleone in the French Quarter.

When food and water ran out they were advised by a senior New Orleans police officer to cross the Crescent City Connection bridge to Jefferson Parish, where he promised they would find buses waiting to evacuate them.

They were in the middle of a group of up to 800 people - overwhelmingly black - walking across the bridge when they heard shots and saw people running. Making their way towards the crest of the bridge they saw a chain of armed police officers blocking the route. When they asked about the buses they were told there was no such arrangement and that the route was being blocked to avoid their parish becoming "another New Orleans". They identified the police as officers from the city of Gretna.

The following day Mr Bradshaw said they tried again to cross and directly witnessed police shooting over the heads of a middle-aged white couple who were also turned back. Arthur Lawson, chief of the Gretna police department, said he had not yet questioned his officers as to whether they fired their guns.

He confirmed that his officers, along with those from Jefferson Parish and the Crescent City Connection police force, sealed the bridge and refused to let people pass. This was despite the fact that local media were informing people that the bridge was one of the few safe evacuation routes from the city.

Mr Bradshaw and his wife were eventually evacuated to Texas and have since returned to California. They condemned the Louisian authorities, contrasting their mean-mindedness with the generosity of Texans. Meanwhile, the dead of New Orleans, uncounted and uncollected while the ruined city fought to save Hurricane Katrina's survivors, were the top concern yesterday amid hopes that the numbers may be fewer than the 10,000-plus once feared.

More than 300 deaths have been confirmed in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, though much higher totals have been feared. About a million people were displaced by the destruction.

Yesterday also saw growing criticism of the way in which the administration of George W Bush dealt with the disaster and failed to adequately fund the maintenance of the levies which collapsed, allowing much of Lake Ponchartrain to flood New Orleans.

The House Government Reform Committee is to hold a hearing on the response to the disaster on Thursday. The Senate will open a similar hearing on Wednesday.

London Independent