US - Police Chief Says He Exaggerated Post-Katrina Crime

The New York Sun reports.

Officials and local commentators have long suggested that the false reports of rampant crime following the hurricane were a reason for the slowness of rescue efforts. With recovery teams and humanitarian aid groups frightened to enter the city, many storm survivors were left stranded on roofs without food and water, in makeshift rafts, and in filthy conditions at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.

And MSM, including the anti-American BBC, were happy to report these unsubstantiated claims.

In part due to the trumped-up crime reports, officials in a neighboring town — fearing the chaos would spread — responded by ordering police to shoot any evacuee who attempted to cross the Crescent City Connection bridge into the city of Gretna from New Orleans.

"I'm going to tell you that during that storm, the national media reported rampant rumors that have now turned out not to be true. … And people were terrified," Louisiana's lieutenant governor, Mitch Landrieu, says in the film.

"In my estimation, that Gretna thing was a way overreaction to rampant rumors that were being pushed in the mainstream media," he adds.