More Troops Make Life a Little Easier for the Big Easy
NEW ORLEANS — Five Louisiana National Guardsmen spotted a pickup truck parked outside a garbage-strewn, gutted house on desolate Bellaire Drive in the city's Lakeview neighborhood one recent morning.
In the back of the truck was a pile of copper pipes and other scrap metal -- valuable booty in this post-Hurricane Katrina world, where such raw materials fetch a profit.
Sgt. Milton Ramirez questioned the seven Spanish-speaking workers at the house about their activities there and requested the name and phone number of the property owner.
The owner "said they are good guys, and if they find anything that is useful to them, they can take it," Ramirez said of the workers. "They are legitimately here to gut the home and salvage what they can."
That's a relief for Ramirez and his fellow Air National Guardsmen, who are part of a task force of about 300 guardsmen and 60 state police that fans out over New Orleans each day and night, to patrol sparsely populated and deserted areas of the city where looting has flared.
Items being stolen include copper pipes and power lines, generators, catalytic converters from cars, historical architectural decorations, building material, pressure washers and other tools.
"The only way you are going to control that is to saturate the area" with law enforcers, said task force commander Col. Steve Dabadie. "I'm sure the criminals have their techniques. We're going to learn them -- and we have ours."
The guardsmen, whose arrival in New Orleans last week followed the shooting deaths of five teenagers and a recent increase in violent crimes, patrol the largely empty neighborhoods on Humvees and on foot. A helicopter with a spotlight and infrared device, and a canine unit are available for use by the National Guard, Dabadie said.
They carry pistols and standard-issue shotguns and are authorized to use force, but when they come across suspected criminal activity, they call in the New Orleans police.
"First and foremost, we are here in support of the New Orleans Police Department," Dabadie said.
Critics of the troop deployment had charged that with the guardsmen's arrival, New Orleans was becoming a police state.
"That's not it at all," said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, state public affairs officer for the Louisiana National Guard. "The city is not under siege. The city is trying to recover. We are assisting them. It's not armed conflict here."
