Eddie Compass, former Chief of Police in New Orleans, says he “exaggerated the post-Katrina crime”:
The New Orleans police chief during Hurricane Katrina, Eddie Compass, says he unnecessarily “heightened people’s fears” by repeating unconfirmed reports of out-of-control crime in the city during the aftermath of the storm, adding to the confusion caused by the disaster and potentially hampering rescue efforts.
[snip]
“But there was really no way for me to check definitively. So instead I erred on the side of caution. I didn’t want people to think we were trying to cover anything up. So I repeated these things without being substantiated, and it caused a lot of problems,” he said.
“Caused a lot of problems“? If that’s not the mother of all understatements, I don’t know what is… but all the blame can’t be assumed by Compass. Nagin, too, was trumpeting the horror stories for the hungry press.
And that hungry, starving, raving press gobbled it all up. It didn’t even occur to them that perhaps they should see those stacked bodies for themselves, and to this day I don’t think they realize the ramifications of their shoddy reporting.
Because like everything else about Katrina, there’s blame enough for everyone, but it was the New Orleanians who had to pay the price for Compass, Nagin, and the MSM on top of everything else.