Waiting for help, officers keep a lonely vigil

Waiting for help, officers keep a lonely vigil
Loyalty binds them to victims
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | September 3, 2005

NEW ORLEANS -- Across from the mass human suffering at the fetid convention center yesterday, before a convoy of Humvees finally delivered hundreds of National Guard troops to this crime-ridden intersection of dashed hopes and mounting anger, a city police officer touched his finger to his eye and began to cry.

''I'm going to stay here till everything's done," the officer said. ''I love this city."

Until the troops arrived at midday, the police officer and five colleagues had been the only round-the-clock security for the convention center, where a few thousand displaced residents had languished for five days without food, water, medical attention, and the transportation that federal and state officials had promised them.

In the morning, when the police officer cried, he spoke caustically about the supplies that had yet to arrive for the storm victims, and the lack of food and equipment for the officers. Whatever they needed to eat, the officer said, they had taken from the looted stores around them. The officers asked not to be identified for fear of retribution from the department.

Since the unit was assigned to the post on Sunday, the police said, they had not heard from their superiors, on their working radios or in person. The officers were exhausted and bitter, unwilling to patrol the danger-filled Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, where they would be hopelessly outnumbered, where dead bodies lay in cafeteria galleyways, and where children played on urine-soaked carpet.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/09/03/waiting_for_help_officers_keep_a_lonely_vigil/

and did what they could to help.

The know the truth of what really happened.