There was an absence of information and an inability to communicate, and people feared the worst. There was also a police chief irresponsibly spreading rumors that his officers were being targeted for attack, making the worst all but inevitable.
Then-Superintendent Eddie Compass told a Connecticut newspaper a fanciful tale of a late-night firefight at the Convention Center. His SWAT team was being attacked, he said, and guided only by the light of the criminals' muzzles flashing, his officers got close enough to wrestle 30 weapons out of their hands. It was a story that Winn, the SWAT commander, rebutted. They saw muzzle flashes and heard gunshots only once, he said. They didn't recover a single weapon.
Mayor Ray Nagin, apparently getting erroneous information from Compass, repeated the chief's story that babies in New Orleans were being raped, telling Oprah Winfrey that those who remained in the city had become "almost animalistic."
If you tell a police force that officers are being warred against, that babies are being sexually assaulted and that city residents have essentially gone rabid, you have given them license to shoot without thinking. You have helped foment mayhem.
The brand is very powerful after all.
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