By Chris Carroll

I’d been home from New Orleans a few days when a guy down the street, an analyst for U.S. Homeland Security’s immigration division, told me 700 or more of his agency’s SWAT-type officers had been pulled off the borders, out of airports, and wherever else they guard our nation from Salvadoran drug gangs and kielbasa-smuggling Polish grannies, and sent to patrol the ravaged Crescent City.

My first reaction was incredulity. Even at the height of the widely-reported chaos—the looting, raping, murdering and general lawlessness that was supposed to have reigned in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina—my guess is that those 700 tactical officers alone could have pacified the whole city.

They could have guarded the food and water shipments that should have been sent into the city right after the storm, but weren’t. They could have escorted trucks carrying portable toilets so people would not have had to crap in alleyways or in muck-filled bathrooms with no running water. They could have provided security for ambulance drivers picking up the weakest and most vulnerable people trapped in New Orleans, a number of whom died after sitting in the heat for days.

But to send the heavy cavalry in now, in mid-September? With most of the population gone, and tens of thousands of National Guard troops stationed at every other intersection, of what possible use could these heavily-armed paramilitaries be? Idiotic! my rational brain shouted.

My second reaction to the news—this from the part of my cortex that controls my professional activities—was: Good Times!

That’s right, folks. As usual, there’s a whole side to this story you haven’t heard. The slanted, liberal media doesn’t want you to know about it. For that matter, neither do the fascist-leaning police and military organizations. I don’t mind letting you in on a little trade secret, though.

New Orleans in the weeks after Katrina became nothing short of the world’s No. 1 vacation destination for two elite groups of tourists: cops and journalists. Every major news outlet and plenty of minor ones from around the world parachuted journalists into New Orleans. It seemed that every U.S. city and government agency, and dozens of small towns also volunteered their sheriffs, patrolmen, or SWAT teams to go restore order. It was like spring break for armed frats.

Think about it from the law-enforcement side. Why do people enter the profession in the first place? Sure, the idea of public service motivates some of them, but gimme a break. Packing heat and ordering people around is the main attraction. And if that’s what you like, policing in America don’t get no sweeter than it was for the out-of-town officers pouring into New Orleans, where you constantly had your M-4, your MP5, even your trusty AK close at hand, even in the middle of lunch with 50 other officers. Better yet, you had the Louisiana governor practically encouraging you to smoke anyone causing trouble. That made things exciting.

Let me make something clear, however: Most cops are family men who have little or no desire to kill. Which is another reason New Orleans in its destroyed state was such a nice place to take a working vacation. By about September 3 or 4—aside from cops, soldiers, journalists and a few officials—there was hardly anyone left to make trouble. They’d all been bussed away to shelters in other cities.

Emptied out thusly, New Orleans became a real nice place to wear your exotic sunglasses, your tac vest, your black paramilitary outfits and boots, to carry your machine gun, and just to hang out with your buddies and look intimidating. Paradise.

About the only people to try and intimidate, though, were the hundreds, maybe thousands of print and broadcast journalists, for whom post-Katrina New Orleans had became sort of a New Prague.

I mean, it was so awesome because there were hardly any boring Joe Schmoes around—only fascinating, and not infrequently, rather hot, journalists. Early on, if you were a reporter and you wanted to gather some heartbreaking content, all you’d do was leave your hotel or air-conditioned TV truck and venture a few blocks to the Superdome or the Ernest Morial Convention Center. People were just lined up there—dehydrated, exhausted, scared out of their minds. In short, they were quote machines.

Once the people got shipped away, you could roam the echoing, desolate streets, feeling conflicting emotions, sadness, disbelief. You could perhaps make a pilgrimage to one of the bodies left, almost as if for your benefit, to molder for days on 9th Street downtown, or on Laurel Street in the Garden District area—and then go back and write a story waxing eloquent about the shocking thing that had befallen our nation. How could America sink to third-world conditions! And then drink some looted liquor with your buddies.

Sure, later on you’ll have to give some thought to the fact that your histrionic reporting on rapes and killings that probably didn’t happen may have helped to slow the delivery of aid to the suffering—but in the whole you and your colleagues agree that the media have performed heroically.

If you are a TV correspondent, the anchor asks you on air, “How can you hold up under such terrible strain?” If you are a print journalist, you will give a radio interview or write a first-person story when you return to your hometown—something about your deepening state of post-traumatic stress disorder, or perhaps about the hope for humanity you discovered in the midst of despair.

I had to leave New Orleans right after the big mass of evacuees was bussed away, and I’m sorry I had to miss what I imagine were some of the best times in the empty city. But before I left, something happened that has stuck with me.

I was picking my way through the debris on city streets in my rented SUV. As I drove slowly toward one of my counterparts in law enforcement, who was guarding an empty corner, I lifted an index finger from the steering wheel. He nodded almost imperceptibly in return. Our eyes met briefly, but long enough for something to pass between us—something unsaid. Had it been said, however, it might have been like this:

Me: "Sir, you and I have little in common, but we're both here in our element, heroically doing dirty jobs in a lawless and destroyed city, a little patch of hell that has clawed its way to the surface of the earth."

Him: "Got that right, jack. Here you got all the human misery you need for your little stories, and I got the authorization I need to carry a long gun and kick ass."

Me: "Indeed, my friend. Wherever I turn, any random person I see in the street qualifies as a 'story' so to speak. What could be more convenient?"

Him: "Right on. An' if any thug bastard tries anything crazy, I'm gonna light 'im up, no questions asked."

Me: "So at this point, you’re not going to have a problem, are you, if I flip the wheel to the left and drive my SUV down the grassy median of the road rather than steer carefully through the debris, right? I'm going to leave tire tracks, go the wrong way up a one-way street, and frankly, it’s going to be fun."

Him: "Be my guest, buddy. I ain’t from around here. I still think reporters are liberal pussies, but hey, it’s our town now."

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