News of Pandemonium May Have Slowed Aid

With nearly all communications systems with people on the ground crippled, live television became a primary information source. It was how the governor first heard about levee breaches and reports of extreme violence, particularly at the Superdome.

"The television stations were reporting that people were literally stepping over bodies and violence was out of control," said Blanco press secretary Denise Bottcher, who was at the governor's side. "But the National Guardsmen were saying that what we were seeing on CNN was contradictory to what they were seeing. It didn't match up."

In Gretna, La., a suburb of 17,500 across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans, officials fired a warning shot to keep about 5,000 people from entering by walking across a bridge connecting the two communities. The crowd retreated.

Gretna Mayor Ronnie Harris said his town has been unfairly labeled racist and defended the decision. His own residents, he said, did not have water, food or electricity after Katrina struck, and officials feared, partly because of what they had heard through word of mouth and from electronic news media, that its residents were in danger. A nearby mall had been burned the day before; officials think looters did it.

"We were going to protect the lives of our residents," he said. "It's impossible to know what happened unless you were here. At the time, you don't know what to believe, but you don't want to be in a place to find out if what you heard is true."

The morning that CNN reported about the Superdome helicopter shooting and Landrieu talked of sheriffs being killed, "Baton Rouge was in a near-panic," U.S. Attorney David R. Dugas recalled in an interview Friday. He said it was hard to keep track of all the rumors -- riots in the city's River Center, a shelter for 5,000 evacuees from New Orleans; a Wal-Mart robbed and all the guns stolen; opposing gangs rampaging in the streets. The stories ricocheted from television to all-news radio to officialdom to citizens and back again.

Police and sheriffs chased each one down: All were unfounded. In a hastily called news conference, Dugas and Baton Rouge's mayor and police chief pleaded with residents to resist believing the worst. Meanwhile, an East Baton Rouge Parish official begged the local radio station to screen calls before putting them live on the air to avoid spreading unconfirmed reports.

Plausible Rumors

Although many of the displaced have been the recipients of overwhelming generosity, the rumors of violence have followed them to Houston, Salt Lake City and New Iberia, La. "You would hear that two people got into a fight at a red light and cut each other to death," said Iberia Parish Sheriff Sid Hebert. "It was all violent crime, rape and pillaging. But none of it was true."

To some in the public and in the news media, the images of barely checked violence in New Orleans, and its fleeing residents, seemed plausible. New Orleans is a violent city with an average of 200 homicides a year.

The scenes of poor black people engaged in lawlessness after such events as the acquittal of the police officers who beat Rodney King or the 1977 New York City blackout are depressingly familiar, said writer and social critic Stanley Crouch. "The public is accustomed to riotous behavior from black people in lower-class neighborhoods," he said. "Anybody who has looked at television over the last 40 years has seen black Americans tearing up places, looting places."

Finally, New Orleans was not crime-free in Katrina's aftermath. People were seen on television taking things from stores. Some were items to eat, drink or wear -- what the police call "essential items," for which people were not being arrested because the situation was so dire. Others took television sets, jewelry and guns.

Four New Orleans police officers have been suspended and one has been reassigned over allegations of looting, city police said. In the first three weeks after the storm, about 470 suspects were processed from New Orleans and adjacent Jefferson Parish. Half of them were arrested for looting, said Jim Letten, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana.