Sheriff's officers lament New Orleans police actions William Hermann The Arizona Republic Sept. 7, 2005 12:00 AM
On their final day in Louisiana, some Maricopa County sheriff's deputies met with their supervisors to discuss a number of disturbing events they saw while patrolling the streets of New Orleans.
They watched New Orleans police officers loading their patrol cars with items taken from various businesses, including a Wal-Mart, a couple of pharmacies, a hardware store, an auto-parts store and a grocery store.
Whether it was looting or a necessary act of survival, the deputies didn't like it.
"There were a lot of guys seeing things they thought were very wrong. That was the perception," sheriff's Detective Gary McGuire said.
So Tuesday morning, Larry Black, chief of enforcement for the Sheriff's Office, gathered his men and women at the Lamar-Dixon Exhibition Grounds, their base camp for the past few days, to discuss what they saw.
Black first reminded his officers that the New Orleans police had been working for days without sleep, without being resupplied, without power, without gas and, in some cases, even without food.
Black said that he was told by the New Orleans police captain in Algiers, a New Orleans district on the western bank of the Mississippi River where sheriff's deputies spent the past few days on patrol, that officials from Wal-Mart and other stores gave officers permission to take items they needed.
"The worst thing we could do is judge what happened," he said. "They were besieged."
Since Hurricane Katrina struck, media reports say up to 500 New Orleans officers, a third of the force, have stopped reporting for duty, and two have committed suicide.
Several New Orleans police officials declined to comment for this story.
"My officers on duty at the Wal-Mart were concerned when they saw New Orleans police taking things from the store," Lt. Randy Brice said. "I also saw things going out of the store. But I also saw New Orleans officers writing down the bar codes of what was being taken out."
Black told his staff the New Orleans police ran out of everything and desperately needed things like batteries, flashlights, clothing, some auto parts and some food.
"I think there will be investigations, but we aren't judging this," Black said.
Sgt. J.D. Sidebottom of the Kennedale Police Department near Fort Worth, which has been assisting police in New Orleans, also declined to judge the New Orleans police.
"When you have the kind of need they had, what are you going to do?" he asked. "When you're a police officer in that situation, you do what you have to do to survive."
After the meeting, the sheriff's convoy had just begun its return trip to Phoenix when a sheriff's detective shot a man in the eye with a beanbag round during a confrontation along Interstate 10. The incident occurred about 8 a.m. outside Gonzales, La., the town south of Baton Rouge where a 100-person contingent from the Sheriff's Office has been staying.
Officials at the scene said the driver pulled alongside the convoy and began driving erratically. He pulled in front of some sheriff's vehicles and began hitting his brakes. After initially refusing to stop, he finally pulled over and began threatening sheriff's Detective Jason Lier and Sgt. Aaron Brown, who showed their badges and asked him to stop, officials said. When he continued to threaten them and advanced toward them, officials say Lier, a member of the sheriff's SWAT team, shot him with a beanbag round that hit him in the left eye.
"What happened this morning was two well-trained deputies made a decision not to fire ammunition at this guy, but to use a 40-millimeter rubber round," Sheriff Joe Arpaio said.
The motorist, whose name was unavailable, was hospitalized with severe trauma to his eye.
Staff reporter Emily Bittner and the New York Times contributed to this article.
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