Katrina Coverage

From "Cops trapped survivors in New Orleans":

Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city…

"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.

"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said.

The bridge in question — the Crescent City Connection — is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.

Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river…

[The NO Times-Picayune, WDSU, and other local media said the CCC was the only way out…]

"Evidently, someone on the ground (in New Orleans) was telling people there was transport here, or food or shelter," said Lawson. "There wasn't."

"We were not contacted by anyone" about the instructions being given to survivors to use the bridge to get out of town, he said…

…Lawson says that his officers "acted in the manner they were instructed to" and defends the order to close the bridge as "the right decision."

He said that in addition to his security concerns, an unmoored vessel on the river "raised the threat that it might crash into and breach the levee, which would have flooded Gretna."

He says that his officers did assist about 4000 people who "arrived at the doorstep of (Gretna City)" either by crossing the bridge before it was closed or approaching from another route.

"We commandeered public transit buses and we took them to higher and safer ground" at the junction of Interstate-10 and Causeway Boulevard where "there was food and shelter," he said.

This report seems to have been instigated by the paramedics' "first-hand" report. (UPI wasn't able to contact those authors, they didn't confirm facts other than the bridge matter, and they don't mention the socialism connection.)

Previously: "Gretna Police Dep’t blocked NO evacuees".

UPDATE: Now see "Did LA state employees block the exit from New Orleans?"

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