Maybe it's a little unfair to group thousands of people together as having one motivation and one level of character.
The man toting the board with food on top of his head, wading his way home through filth may have just wanted to provide sustenance for his family.
Winn Dixie is a grocery store.
Visit this scenario for a moment please. You live in Mississippi near the Mississippi River. Imagine if you will, and this may be difficult if not impossible, that you are truly poor. You've been without much of anything all of your life. Your family's history is one that has experienced nothing other than being poor.
The promise of a better economy is announced multiple times. Finally beautiful hotel and boat casinos show up in your area. Lots of money is changing hands. You can't even get a job in one of them. You see no improvement in your personal economy. Then your uninsured home is trashed by a storm. You have no food. You have little water. You see a quarter slot machine lying in the muck. Are you not going to bust that thing open? Are you not going to at least be tempted? Biloxi and Gulfport look as was described, like a tsunami hit them. If you are a left in that hot, stinking debris field to fend the best way possible, come across a wrecked and abandoned soft-drink truck, would you take something to drink? At that point is there a great difference between the quarters and the 7-ups?
Back to New Orleans. I think the people stealing jewelry and Nike tennis shoes in NOLA might deserve some harsh treatment. Looting in Louisiana carries a mandatory 3 years and up to 15 years prison sentence. Angola is not a happy place to be. Blow away a looter? If it were my jewelry store, I lived above it and couldn't get an invalid family member evacuated, well...more on that later.
I don't think that the old dude with the food should be impeded.
A news report stated that a give-away was announced for a local Wal-Mart. The police were there to control the crowd but could not. Some folks took food. Others took everything else. It was reported that some cops were seen taking non-essentials. The store was gutted. In another incident an officer was shot in the head while police confronted some looters. It was reported that he is expected to recover.
It is bedlam and the streets are filled with many types of people.
Should law enforcement blow away someone looting a store? That would be a difficult call for me to make while I and mine sit in comfort with plenty to eat and cold bottled water to drink. A looter breaking into my home while I was there would be a different story and require not much of a decision tree.
Meanwhile the flooding has increased this evening. My and maybe your beloved New Orleans is being turned into a sump basin. Some people are sustaining injury. Some people are dying. Pain, agony and personal devastation are rising.
I understand anger at wrongdoing but, in my opinion, labeling all the looters as any one thing isn't intellectually sound. Moreover, it just doesn't seem to be a significantly important mental process right now. No offence intended.
- Jeff
