New Orleans police struggle to right their world

updated 7:47 p.m. ET Oct. 10, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - Their homes are gone, their families scattered, their reputations sliding by the day.

Home for most New Orleans police officers is a cramped cruise ship, and work is 12- to 14-hour days in a wrecked city. When time off does come along, there is nowhere to go and no one to spend it with.

Experts say the personal and professional upheaval is catching up with the New Orleans police force in the form of desertions, suicides, corruption and perhaps even the videotaped beating over the weekend of an allegedly drunken man on Bourbon Street, to which police pleaded not guilty on Monday.

“This is unprecedented in our country,” said Dr. Howard Osofsky, chairman of psychiatry at the LSU Medical School Health Sciences Department. “There is no disaster that has had the amount of trauma for a department that this has, where so many police officers have lost homes, been separated from their families, had loved ones living in other places with no idea when they’ll return.”

Not even the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 have matched the strain produced by the hurricane and its ensuing rescues, evacuations and searches for the living and dead, said Osofsky, who is working with New Orleans officers and their families.

“The 9/11 attacks were very different,” he said. “Following 9/11 there was a known enemy, a known situation. And even though the two buildings were destroyed and lives lost, the people who survived could go to their homes. The city of New York was not destroyed, the country around it was not destroyed.”

80 percent of NOPD without homes
Like about 80 percent of the New Orleans force, 46-year-old Ronald Gillard, a 15-year veteran, lost his house to the storm. But when the winds died down, he was back at work.

“We went to the flooded areas and just started rescuing people,” he said. “We worked as long as we could, then I slept on the floor in a hotel lobby. We were eating cold food out of cans we found.”

Gillard called the cruise ship housing a lifesaver, even though police are usually two to a room. “If it wasn’t for that, being able to eat a hot meal, having a place to stay, I think I would have lost my mind,” he said.

The ship also allows his wife and 10-year-old son, now living in Houston, to visit on weekends. But the scattering of families is another stress factor.

Officer Melody Young, whose husband and son are also New Orleans officers, said she cries a lot these days. Her daughter is spending her senior year with Young’s sister in Mississippi. Her father is in intensive care in a Mississippi hospital.

“I pray a lot,” she said.

When Katrina passed, the department found itself without communications, with officers cut off from each other and headquarters. Lawlessness spread through the city. Rescue workers reported being shot at. Police Superintendent Eddie Compass publicly repeated allegations — later debunked — that people were being beaten and babies raped at the convention center.

MORE FROM KATRINA: THE LONG ROAD BACK

Katrina: The Long Road Back Section Front

Apologetic Nagin visits N.Y. Bush sees rebirth from ‘sadness’ of Katrina Special report: Rebuilding lives Katrina exodus felt far and wide A tangled tale of Katrina survival ‘New Orleans is still crying’ Brian Williams: We were witnesses Developers' past includes fraud Special report: Rising from Ruin Dateline video blogs: Covering Katrina Katrina: The Long Road Back Section Front   Add Katrina: The Long Road Back headlines to your news reader: