Adding Injury to Injury
Amid all the death and destruction of Hurricane Katrina, you might think that people would band together and try to help one another out. While that is happening, that’s not all. From a recent Yahoo! news article:
“We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten,” [New Orleans Police Chief] Compass said. “Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon.”
I can understand looting. While I strongly disapprove of stealing, I can at least understand the logic: desperate times make desperate people; when you have nothing, and there’s nobody to stop you, it can be tempting indeed to take advantage of the lack of order. But raping?
Raping?
Hundreds, even thousands are dead, the city is submerged, homes are devastated, people have lost all they owned, and there are those who would make a horrific situation worse by inhumanly violating somebody who has already suffered enough?
Col. Henry Whitehorn, chief of the Louisiana State Police, said he heard of numerous instances of New Orleans police officers — many of whom from flooded areas — turning in their badges.
“They indicated that they had lost everything and didn’t feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives,” Whitehorn said.
Many have decried the lack of police/gov’t. aid in this situation. I find it hard to side with those who would turn tail and walk away from their duties in a time of crisis, but again, I can see why. Help arrives to the sounds not of thanks but of anger at their not having gotten there sooner, or worse yet, violence from those people who have chosen lawlessness in the face of adversity. While I don’t know all that’s going on down there, I do know that with hundreds of thousands of refugees, it’s impossible to get everybody out of there and back on their feet quickly and easily. The scale of the task is simply too large.
“Phil, you’re not there. You don’t know what it’s like.” Well, that’s right. I don’t. But I just don’t understand how somebody could not be grateful when help arrives, even after a long wait. Maybe my outlook would change if I were in that situation, but I hope and pray that that wouldn’t be the case.
Update: 27/9/05Later reports seem to refute the reports of mass violence and murder. Seems that while some things did happen, the majority of reports were greatly exaggerated. I’m very relieved.