Breakfast at Tiffany's – Because I Do Not Know

You Read It Here First

Welcome, Mr. Goodwin, welcome. The New York Daily News columnist joins the trend of holding local and state authorities accountable for their actions -- or inactions -- as Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. He begins with New Orleans' near-anarchy even before the flooding.

Start with crime. That looters ran unchecked after the hurricane isn't surprising when you consider that criminals have had the run of the city for years.

It is a perennial contender for Murder Capital. The 264 homicides last year were a drop of only 11 from 2003 - and the first decline in five years.

New Orleans, with fewer than 500,000 people, had almost half the murders of New York, which had 570 homicides last year in a city of more than 8 million. Put another way, if New York had New Orleans' murder rate, we would have more than 4,200 murders a year.

And he concludes with the mayor's own evacuation "plan."

Then there's Mayor Ray Nagin, a Democrat, who has blamed everybody but himself. Maybe he has forgotten his plans for dealing with Katrina.

Last July, his office prepared DVDs warning that, if the city ever had to be evacuated, residents were on their own. According toa July 24 article in The Times-Picayune (spotted by the Web's Drudge Report), "Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation."

"You're responsible for your safety, and you should be responsible for the person next to you," one official said of the message.

And how's this for preparation? Cops were told not to work on the day Katrina hit, one officer told The New York Times, but "to come in the next day, to save money on their budget."

By all means, let's investigate what went wrong in New Orleans. Let's start in City Hall.

Does any of this sound familiar? It should. You read it here at BaT first.

3 comments Jake McCafferty last posted at 5:11 PM
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3 Comments:

I always knew you were the smart one, all ahead of the curve.

This seriously was a "duh!" kind of issue, really. It's just nobody wanted to say it out loud. Good on you for being brave enough to do so.

By Jay Six, at 12:33 AM

I've been trying to get this message across to my friends for a week now. They think I'm a Bush lover because of it. I blame Bush for not recognizing incompetence, but it all began at home.

By dAAve, at 3:54 PM

Send 'em this way, Dave.

Jay, are you considered brave in this country for telling the truth? If so, another sad chapter.

By Jake McCafferty, at 6:16 PM