Breaking News: NOLA PD Chief Out

New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass III announces he is retiring after a brief transition period.

After his woeful performance over the past month, this can mean only one thing - help is on the way.

To give a brief overview of Compass' last month, he oversaw a police department that came unglued within hours of the hurricane hitting, watched along with the rest of the world as police officers looted along with the common criminals they were supposed to be arresting, and lied and/or exaggerated about events in the Superdome and Convention Center on national television. The reasons for his actions have yet to be examined in any detail by the media, though they'll probably give him a pass. They shouldn't.

As previously noted:

In interviews with Oprah Winfrey, Compass reported rapes of "babies," and Mayor Ray Nagin spoke of "hundreds of armed gang members" killing and raping people inside the Dome. Unidentified evacuees told of children stepping over so many bodies, "we couldn't count."

The picture that emerged was one of the impoverished, masses of flood victims resorting to utter depravity, randomly attacking each other, as well as the police trying to protect them and the rescue workers trying to save them. Nagin told Winfrey the crowd has descended to an "almost animalistic state."

Four weeks after the storm, few of the widely reported atrocities have been backed with evidence. The piles of bodies never materialized, and soldiers, police officers and rescue personnel on the front lines say that although anarchy reigned at times and people suffered unimaginable indignities, most of the worst crimes reported at the time never happened.

In other words, it never got nearly as bad as the media was portraying. What else can one expect when the media myopia was operating in full effect. And the state and local officials were no more helpful as they were actually advancing the rumors and hysteria. Specifically - Mayor Nagin and the NOPD Chief Compass. Where exactly have they been getting their information? Did they even question this information? One has to wonder just how and why they would make these statements without having any facts. Were they simply repeating rumors they themselves had heard instead of conducting proper investigations?

It certainly seems that the investigations have occurred well after the fact, which means that some of the events have passed into urban legend and lore - completely divorced from the reality on the ground.

Technorati: flood aid; hurricane katrina; hurricane rita; katrina aid; new orleans, rita, galveston, lake charles, levee; compass;beaumont; port arthur; levee breach.