At least 200 officers walk away

NEW ORLEANS — Reeling from the chaos of this overwhelmed city, at least 200 New Orleans police officers have walked away from their jobs, and two have committed suicide, police officials said yesterday.

Some officers told superiors that they were leaving, police officials said. Others worked for a while and then stopped showing up. Still others, for reasons not always clear, never made it in after the storm.

The absences come during a period of extraordinary stress for the New Orleans Police Department. For nearly a week, many of its 1,500 members have had to work around the clock, trying to cope with flooding, an overwhelming crush of refugees, looters and occasional snipers.

Edwin Compass, the superintendent of police, said most of his officers were staying at their posts. But in an unusual note of sympathy for a top police official, he said it was understandable many were frustrated. He said morale was "not very good" after nearly a week of deprivation and danger.

"If I put you out on the street and made you get into gunbattles all day with no place to urinate and no place to defecate, I don't think you would be too happy, either," Compass said. "Our vehicles can't get any gas. The water in the street is contaminated. My officers are walking around in wet shoes."

Pressure on firefighters

Fire Department officials said they did not know of any firefighters who had quit, and that there had not been any suicides. But they were more sympathetic than critical of emergency-services workers breaking down under the pressure.

W.J. Riley, assistant superintendent of police, said about 1,200 officers were on duty yesterday. He said the department was not sure how many officers had decided to abandon their posts and how many simply could not get to work.

Riley said some officers who left the force "couldn't handle the pressure" and are "certainly not the people we need in this department."

"The others are not here because they lost a spouse, or their family or their home was destroyed or they don't know where their spouse is," Riley said.

Police officials did not identify the officers who took their lives, one yesterday and the other Friday. But they said one had been a patrol officer, who a senior officer said "was absolutely outstanding."

The other was an aide to Compass. The superintendent said his aide had lost his home in the hurricane and had been unable to find his family.

Isolated from families

Because of the hurricane and the flooding, many police officers and firefighters have been isolated and unable to report for duty. Others evacuated their families and have been unable to get back to New Orleans.

Still, some officers appear simply to have given up.

A Baton Rouge police officer said he had heard of an incident in which two men in a New Orleans police cruiser were stopped in Baton Rouge on suspicion of driving a stolen squad car. The men, in fact, were New Orleans officers who had ditched their uniforms and were trying to reach a town in north Louisiana, the officer said.

"They were doing everything to get out of New Orleans," he said. "They didn't have the resources to do the job or a plan, so they left."

The result is an even heavier burden on those who are patrolling the streets, rescuing flood victims and trying to fight fires with no running water, no electricity, no reliable telephones and a fraction of their radio-communication patrol cars and firetrucks still operating.

Police and fire officials have been begging federal authorities for assistance and criticizing a lack of federal response for several days.

"We need help," said Charles Parent, superintendent of the Fire Department.

Appeal for help

Parent again appealed in an interview yesterday for replacement firetrucks and radio equipment from federal authorities. And Compass again appealed for more federal help.

"When I have officers committing suicide, I think we've reached a point when I don't know what more it's going to take to get the attention of those in control of the response," Compass said.

Some patrol officers said morale had been low on the force even before the hurricane. One patrolman said complaints included understaffing and a lack of equipment.

One patrol officer said many of the officers who had quit were younger, inexperienced officers who were overwhelmed by the task.

At dusk Friday, officers at one precinct in the French Quarter cordoned off the block where their precinct sat and, armed with shotguns, stopped and inspected every car that passed.

"We're not writing tickets anymore," said one officer who pointed a shotgun into a car carrying two newspaper reporters. The journalists were allowed to proceed, but were warned not to pass the checkpoint again.