Bio Jordan Flaherty is a New Orleans-based journalist and works with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience, and his award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of outlets including the New York Times, Mother Jones, and Argentina's Clarin newspaper. Jordan just published released his new book called “FLOODLINES: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six”. t's hard to believe all this took place in america, not mexico or venezuela… Transcript PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay. And now joining us again from our studio in Washington is Jordan Flaherty. He's the author of the book Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six. Thanks for joining us again, Jordan. JORDAN FLAHERTY, AUTHOR AND JOURNALIST: Thank you, Paul. It's a pleasure. JAY: So one of the things that people have talked about after Katrina is the role of the police and the Armed Forces particularly. But a lot has come to light about the role of the New Orleans police and abuses of power. Tell us a bit about what people are looking at. But also, was this an anomaly, where, you know, police went nuts in the course of a storm? Or was this kind of normal New Orleans police behavior that is just getting looked at because of the storm? FLAHERTY: The first thing to understand, Paul, is in those first days after the storm, suddenly the media coverage shifted from sympathy to the people trapped on rooftops, the victims of this disaster, to portraying people as criminals, as looters, as armed gangs roving the streets, shooting at police helicopters, raping infants. We later found out those stories were false. But they were propagated by the chief of police, who said that infants were being raped in this Superdome; by the mayor, who said that there was lawlessness on the street, that he declared martial law, even though no such thing exists under Louisiana law. The governor of the state of Louisiana—Kathleen Blanco at the time—said, I'm sending in the National Guard troops; they're locked and loaded, they've been trained to shoot to kill, and I expect they will. JAY: Now, hang on for a sec. You're saying there were no incidents? Or some incidents were exaggerated to look like it was a bigger phenomenon than it was? FLAHERTY: I'm saying those incidents that were specifically talked about that were incredibly outrageous, like infants being raped in mass numbers in the Superdome—there was no raping of infants that anyone's documented that happened in the Superdome. Shooting at rescue helicopters—again, no one's documented where that happened, although that was widely talked about at the time. Another incident that was talked about, the second-in-charge of the police department said he heard officers radioing in saying they needed more ammo, they were running out of ammo, like they were in a wartime situation. Again, this call never actually happened. So these major incidents that were talked about never happened. There were certainly people, both police officers and regular civilians, that were taking goods out of stores, mostly food and water to feed people in their community. But the massive, violent outbreak that was talked about in the news that was used to demonize people, that actually didn't happen. JAY: So why do people think the police were doing this? I mean, what's in it for them to exaggerate the issue? FLAHERTY: I think it was a time of chaos. It's hard to imagine, if you weren't in the city, what it was like there, but we never imagined this entire city would be underwater. Everything was unimaginable. Everything seemed like we were in a fantasy world. And so many of the things that actually did happen seemed like they couldn't possibly have happened. For example, one thing that really did happen is people were trying to cross out of the city over the Crescent City Bridge, and they were met by armed police from the suburb of Gretna that didn't want people of New Orleans in their city, and they shot at the people from New Orleans and forced them to turn back. This seemed like fiction when we first heard about it. Many of the police killings that happened in that period after Katrina seemed like fiction. It was hard to believe any of this. It was a time of almost mass hysteria. added by: treewolf39
