The hurricane aftermath
By Burton S. Katz / Retired L.A. Superior Court Judge
I remember the smells, as if it were yesterday. The sense of smell that brings back memories in precise and unwanted details of tragedy; the searing toxic smells of sulfur, hate and fear; a stinking cocktail of “men run amuck.” Citizens fought over who could throw the most deadly Molotov cocktail, loot the most, hurt the most, rape their fellow innocents and pillage their belongings.
Police and firemen, trying to put out the seemingly hundreds of fires, were sitting ducks for the citizens whose fury and outrage knew no bounds. They were shot at, harassed, beaten and finally stopped from doing their jobs. Cops and firemen were consigned to watching the city burn as people from here and all over the world pontificated about the inequalities, disparities in the treatment of races and the deteriorating relationship between the city’s police and the minority neighborhoods they served. The socialists and the communists all gloated, saying this was the capitalistic apocalypse, long overdue.
The year was 1965. I was a newly minted deputy district attorney. With little training in preliminary hearings (a proceeding following a felony arrest to determine if there was sufficient evidence to warrant a subsequent trial), I was sent to a special night court in Compton, along with other deputies from all over the county, to handle the hundreds of preliminary hearings arising out of the massive arrests from the Watts riots.
I had a badge. I had a loaded gun on my car seat. My hand trembled so much that when I was stopped at a road block, it took an eternity to show my badge and explain my purpose in the vicinity. Behind the roadblocks I could see acrid smoke and surging fires, the anger in the billowing crowds and the indiscriminate violence between the citizens. Looting was rampant.
As many of you may know, the 1965 Watts riots were precipitated by a routine traffic stop in South Central Los Angeles. Six days later: 34 persons dead, thousands injured, thousands arrested. Los Angeles was coming apart. For six days anarchy reigned. For six days unreason and man’s inhumanity to man prevailed.
I tried to console my self that the rule of law would return, but I wondered if we would ever again be the same people … have the same trust in each other and our government and its ability to serve its people.
That was a long time ago. Then Katrina came along and devastated Louisiana, Mississippi and parts of Alabama. It was said that the government and the politicians were well aware of the need to repair and strengthen the levies and infrastructure. They were and they didn’t. As if engaged in a tarot card reading, the government divined that New Orleans would not be braced with a Category 5 or 4 hurricane. On what basis they concluded this, we will never know. It was always “when” the Category 5 or 4 would strike, not if.
So the good citizens who were stricken by at least a force 4 hurricane had only decaying infrastructure to meet nature’s fury. In their eyes, the government should have protected them from this catastrophe-or at least greatly mitigated its unbridled fury. It should have had plans and implemented evacuation before Katrina struck, and after it struck the rescue mission should have immediately deployed with food, shelter and medical assistance. That costs money. Where was the money? Where were the congressional appropriations to do this … before Katrina? Where was the planning?
There was outrage and fury. But ultimately it will be man’s fury that defines the debacle. How do you justify raping innocent women and children? Murdering them? How do you justify looting your neighbor’s homes and businesses? How do you justify beating fellow citizens who are smaller and weaker than you? How do you justify preying upon your brothers and sisters who came together at the Convention Center and at the Superdome for mutual protection as they wait in desperation for government help?
Firemen, policemen and officials who were trying to render assistance were shot at, attacked and otherwise prevented from mitigating the increasingly desperate situation.
Chaos and anarchy, the evil twins of a country’s lawlessness, dominated the news. The most powerful nation in the history of mankind seemed impotent, rotting from within.
Some citizens made the conscious decision to act beyond the strictures of the law. They became outlaws, criminals. They reduced this great nation to a cesspool of violence and chaos. They acted in the manner we are so quick to ascribe to Third World nations in crises.
We are no better as a nation than a country run by despots served by goons, if we cannot keep the peace, protect the innocent and provide the fundamental services to which every citizen of the U.S. is entitled.
I hope that the prosecuting attorneys will proceed with full vigor against those criminals who in the wake of Katrina’s fury took advantage of their fellow man.
I know they will never forget the stench of the decaying bodies left in its wake nor of the horrible lawlessness that stains our society.
There are better times ahead. We are a good and decent people that should not tolerate lawlessness and violence in any form, for any reason. We are nothing without the rule of law.