Order Out Of Chaos

It's been two weeks since Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in American history, slammed into the Gulf Coasts of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and, when the levee broke, literally drowned New Orleans.

The declaration of an entire American city as uninhabitable followed by a mandatory evacuation was unprecedented. So was the job of bringing order out of chaos, which fell to the Crescent City's police department. Eighty per cent of the officers lost their own homes; nearly a third is still missing. It's thought most of those walked away from the job. Some may have died in the storm and its aftermath.

While the overall relief operation has been called another disaster, for the 1,200 cops who stayed on the job, the last two weeks may have been their finest hour. Ed Bradley and 60 Minutes spent this week in New Orleans with the man in charge of the department and got a firsthand look at the challenges he and his officers faced when Hurricane Katrina hit town.

Chief Compass says he and his men and women are still standing after, with the exception of 9/11, the most dramatic two weeks any American police department has ever faced. 60 Minutes rode with the chief in the back of a truck from the Texas National Guard as he patrolled streets that are still flooded. Later, he tried to describe what the last two weeks have been like.

Says Compass, "Imagine holdin' a city together with no communications, no resources, no ammunition. Doing search and rescue. Then switching from search and rescue to tactical because individuals starting at the fire trucks and search and rescue teams."

Compass says that as devastating as the hurricane was, the following morning, he thought the worst was over.

"At 6:00 in the morning," he recalls, "I was loading up my truck to bring my son to Texas A&M. I had no idea what was about to take place. You know, everybody thought it had -- we had dodged a bullet. Nobody knew."

The problems began, says the chief, when the levee broke.

Over the next four days, law and order disintegrated, and parts of New Orleans descended into chaos. New Orleans cops were left to rescue thousands of people trapped by the rising waters, while small groups of armed thugs roamed the flooded streets, robbing homes and shooting at police, fire trucks and rescue helicopters. Fires burned throughout the city for days, while bodies floated in the water.

At one point during the chaos, someone even tried to kidnap Compass. Someone in the crowd recognized him and told the others that if they could hold Compass hostage, they might be able to get a bus to come over and pick them up.

"And some other individuals joined in. And they tried to grab me," Compass recalls. "But my guys pushed them back. And he got me into a vehicle and got me out of there. Yeah."

Did Compass ever imagine the situation could have come to that point?

"No one in the world could have imagined it could get to that," the chief replies.

Did he, for a period, feel that he lost control of the city?

"I don't think we ever lost control of the city to the point where…the criminal element was gonna take it over," he says. "You know, parts of the city, where we overwhelmed by the masses. But this police department stood strong."

If the New Orleans Police Department stood strong, no one stood stronger than Capt. Jeff Wynn, who commands the New Orleans police department's special operations unit.

Says Wynn, "When we first started, we were deep into the rescue mode. And we would have to pull off a rescue mode to go and handle SWAT situation and immediately go back to rescue mode.

"And when I say 'rescue mode,' I'm not talking about driving from point A to point B. I'm talking about getting a bunch of tag guys out of a boat. Going over and looking at a target. Taking down that target. Getting back in that boat. And going another two blocks over. Cutting a rooftop open and getting the family out.

"It just never stopped," concludes Wynn. "I mean… I'll tell you right now, today is a better day than yesterday."

Before, in the beginning, they were on their own?

"We were -- we were stuck like Chuck," Wynn replies.Bradley asks how many of Compass' officers have not been accounted for.

"There's about 500 that haven't been accounted for," the chief responds. "Whether they have quit, whether they have perished in the storm. Whether they're with loved ones, you know. But we have 1,200 that we can account for."

Could one of those missing officers come to Compass and say, "Chief, look, I had to take care of my family." Or, "This is why I wasn't here." And could that person still be a part of the New Orleans Police Department?

"I can understand taking care of your family, and coming right back," says Compass. "I can understand that. But I cannot understand staying with your family while we were going through these conditions, and not backing us up."

He has called some of them cowards.

"I've called individuals who have shirked their responsibility to duty cowards," the chief says. "I wish I possessed a vocabulary large enough to find a word that depicts something worse than a coward. Because, when you look at the sacrifices that the men and women of this police department made that stayed. And for these individuals, not only did they not stay, they talked to the media and criticized the brave men and women that were standing tall and standing strong. Not only are they cowards, they're less than a coward."

To partially make up for the manpower shortage, Chief Compass is swearing in police academy cadets after only 10 weeks of training -- swearing them in wherever he finds them.

Although the rookies are welcome, veterans like Bruce Adams say that the New Orleans Police Department needs more than new recruits; they need something to identify themselves as police officers. Adams says none of them expected the crisis to last as long as it did. "So," he explains, "a lot of us had that one police shirt."

He could hardly believe it when he was told he had been wearing that shirt for 10 days.

"It's 10 days? … What day of the week is it? It's been 10 days?"

During those 10 days, most of the 480,000 people of New Orleans had been replaced by 14,000 people from police departments, state and federal agencies, and the U.S. military, in what looks like an occupation.

The city has been divided into grids so they can conduct a systematic search. An officer from the New Orleans Police Department explained the system to 60 Minutes which then went on a rescue mission with two trucks filled with National Guardsman and New Orleans vice cops who usually go after pimps and prostitutes.That day, they were going after people who needed to be evacuated, driving through ruined neighborhoods, past submerged cars and downed power lines. Everything was silent except for the noise from the engine -- and the occasional sound of a helicopter hovering overhead.

Their destination was Mid City, a leafy neighborhood of quaint single-family houses that today is flooded by a thick toxic soup. The rescuers went to pick up stranded people but were not sure they would be willing to leave.

At 842 Olga Street, they found a family who were persuaded to leave. One of them had a cut that had to be treated immediately to prevent infection. A few blocks away, they found another family: A retired cop, his wife and two other people who had taken refuge in their home. They said a woman cross the street also wanted to be evacuated.

It was the first time any of them had been out of their homes since the hurricane and the first time they had seen the destruction it had caused to their city. The sight was sobering.

City officials have been criticized for not doing enough early on to evacuate New Orleans. Hundreds of school buses sit swamped where they have been since before the storm hit. Could they have been put to better use?

Says Compass, "You know, we did everything humanly possible we could to evacuate as many people as possible. But many people just waited too late. They did not heed the mayor's warning."

And did the mayor say, "If you can't get out, here are buses that will take you out, and this is where you should go"?

Replies the chief, "He gave the location where different buses were gonna be ready to-- you know, evacuated people. But you have to understand, this is a big city. And there's only so many buses. So it was really people's responsibility to get with their neighbors. Neighbors to knock on doors. He encouraged them to do these things. There were police officers out in the streets patrolling with bullhorns, with – lights and sirens on going door to door. I mean it was – every resource that we had was utilized as optimum efficiency to get people out of here."

Now that most people are out of the city, the police are starting to deal with their own problems and with their own losses.

"That's one reason I try to be so upbeat," explains Compass. "That's why I think it's so important for them to see me, for me to interact with them on a daily basis. To keep their spirits up. To keep their spirits high.

"You know, I mean, I love the men and women in this police department… I can't even emphasize that enough. You know, they are my family. We are family. This is not a police department. This is a family."

And most of that family is homeless: 80 percent of the men and women of the New Orleans Police Department lost everything. Lt. David Benelli is one of the lucky ones. He is the head of the city's sex crimes division and when he came home after the storm, he was surprised at what he saw.

He recalls, "I turned the corner, and I saw a couple of trees in the yard. But then when I saw, you know, these skinny pine trees still up, and I saw that the roof was still on, and I went in my backyard and I saw tiki torches still sticking in the backyard, and I go in my house, and there wasn't any water damage, I felt blessed."

So blessed, that Benelli and his wife, Becky, a sergeant in the crime lab, opened up their house to homeless cops. They call it Camp Benelli.
How many people stay at their house?

"It started off at 24," says Benelle. "I mean, withstand the hurricane. We withstand the flood. And I'm sure that 24 people can withstand living under the same roof. You know, we cook. You know, everybody's got their little jobs. Go to work, come home.

"You know," he adds with a laugh, "only thing we can't do is look at a football game 'cause there's no TV."

But despite the camaraderie, each one is still hurting. Capt. Tami Brissett lost her house. Officer Chana Pichon had just located her mother but was still searching for her son, her father and her brother. Darrell Gordon's wife and three kids were in Baton Rouge en route to Houston.

Says Gordon, "I had 'em in a hotel that was costing me $70 a day. And now they're about to move to Houston so my kids can go to school and my wife can get an apartment, and I have to stay here and do my job."

He says he'll never move to Houston, saying of New Orleans: "This is my city. This is my job. I'm gonna do my job."

What do they think about their brother and sister officers who didn't stay as they did?

Says Brissett, "They were not the police. They weren't part of the family. They abandoned not only us, their brothers and sisters; they abandoned the citizens of New Orleans."

Gordon adds that it's a job that from the heart: "If you don't have this, you can't do the job."

That "job," according to the motto of the New Orleans police, is "to protect and serve." The cops 60 Minutes met this week believe they lived up to it.

Says Benelli, "They didn't lose their -- their loyalty. They didn't lose their bravery. They didn't lose their spirit. Because the true men and women of the New Orleans Police Department kept this city viable, kept this city alive for six days that it was under siege by hurricane and flood.

"Every police officer has a story. Every police officer that stayed and worked and protected life is a hero. It's because of the human spirit, and it's because of the likes of these officers that are sitting around here today."