You have no evidence that all of these stolen goods would have been otherwise unrecoverable.
My wife wouldn’t let me. 
Sure I do. There’s a big ass toxic flood in that city. Even stuff that isn’t directly submerged is going to be damaged by humidity and alligators and god knows what else. Most of the shit that’s being taken probably isn’t go to work anyway.
Most property insurance policies exempt civil disorder as a cause of claims. If the store does not have the water damaged merchandise because it’s been looted, they likely won’t get any money for it.
Media Bias anyone?
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10208301530
compared to
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1
Probably two different reporters but still.
If any insurance company refuses to pay off a claim for losses in New Orleans right now under that policy exception the company ought to lose its license and pay hefty punitive damages on account of acting in bad faith. What is a storeowner supposed to do, stay in the store in floodwater up to his or her neck and guard the stuff?
I’ve already seen too many pictures of looters smashing windows and doors to enter buildings to be under the illusion that items (DVDs, jewelry, etc.) is just floating by and the looters happened to grab it. These people had to actually enter a building (in many cases by destroying property to enter), and steal something. Personally, I think it’s the responsibility of the store owners to determine if stuff is beyond sellable and it’s trash (therefore, “okay” to steal).
It amazes me what these looters think they’ll DO with all the stuff they’re stealing. Since 80% of the city is underwater, do they think they’ll be standing on the street corner with hot DVDs, selling them to the rescue workers? Once the city drains (and I’m being optomistic here) I find it difficult to believe that the resident’s top priorities will be jewelry and electronics.
If I may:
and then in this thread
So you would be in favor of stealing garbage. And how exactly does everyone win when people steal? The insurance company has to pay higher claims and probably raise their rates. Smaller businesses will not be able to afford the higher premiums, so they will close up shop, leaving naught but the Horrid Wal-Mart you were so derisive of earlier.
Looting is wrong. I can understand it for food and water and diapers, but not for non-essentials. This is not a victimless crime.
Justifying looting for survival in this case IMHO is going a little overboard…The looters are seen running away with shopping carts and bags of cans, housewares and the like and not just produce or bread, milk or orange juice which woudl spoil.
There should be a shoot to kill to any thieves who steal guns, jewelry, electronics during a time of disaster such as this hurricane. There is a limit to our bending over backwards to defend these cowardly criminals.
Normally, I would not favor looting in any circumstance. But people are not working in the grocery stores today, so even if you wanted to buy a loaf of bread, who are you going to pay?
I will give a pass to those who are taking food, water, or diapers. Hell, I’ll even throw in baby wipes, since it will probably be weeks before these people get a hot shower. But taking electronics? In a city with no electricity? Taking jewelry? For what, dressing up to attend the Post-Katrina ball? Those people are vultures, and they get no sympathy from me.
Just a softball question.
Insurance.
If your building/business is wiped out because of a natural disaster ( and let’s include flood insurance in with this as it is always a seperate policy.) and your business is looted and pillaged, wouldn’t the owner be getting money back from the insurance company anyways? (Shit, there go our insurance rates again. First Osama now Katrina.)
Or, if it is caught on video (national TV coverage) would it not be covered? ( I know zero about insurance stuff.)
I am not saying that looting is justified. If it were a true emergency regarding food and the elderly or children, sure. But this grand scale looting just frightens me about human nature to my very core.
And naturally, it is going global.
Can’t we just behave like humans when things go bad?
Insurance companies have all kinds of clauses that may allow them to deny claims. Flood exemptions are common in property insurance as are exemptions for damage and stealing due to rioting. You cannot assume that every home and business has good coverage or even any coverage at all. Looters aren’t just targeting businesses. Homes are being looted. Most renters don’t have insurance and that may be grandmother’s necklace that looters are stealing.
Even if people have coverage, the insurance companies are all going to be forced into bankruptcy just like they did after Hurricane Andrew. Who is going to pay those claims and when if ever?
It is idiotic to believe that everything you see being pillaged out there is fully insured or unrecoverable.
From what I’ve read, martial law can’t be declared because there are no constitutional provisions for it. Perhaps that was only for certain parts of the area. The people wandering around in gangs with guns are not out there for survival. People going to the grocery store are different. Hell, in theory, some people may have lost all their clothes and might need to steal that. But armed groups taking DVD players? Forget it.
The photo showed a guy with a Marshall Faulk jersey. 
A lot of residents were rescued by people in canoes. I can see a legit need for some of that. Swimming in that water is NOT healthy.
The idea that the police need to start shooting people just to maintain order is absurd. Order is not the priority in New Orleans right now, nor is protecting property. Priority #1 is getting the rest of the people the fuck out of there. Tens of thousands of people stayed behind and they need to be evacuated. The cops can help there, and that only pertains to looters as far as there is a need to keep the rest of the people safe. (And for the police to protect themselves, of course.) Once everyone is gone, there is no order to keep anyway. When that happens, the priority is trying to prevent enormous disease outbreaks. In addition to the people and animals killed by the storm and flooding, burials in New Orleans are above ground, and there’s all that standing water, so they’re looking at cholera, typhoid, malaria… Then they have to get rid of all that water and repair the levees. That’s around the time you worry about order - when they start preparing for the people to come back. That should be the focus months from now.
I was just watching the O’Reilly Factor. What a bunch of crazy crap. He is not alone either on taking the moral highground. So many newscasters like to point out about how horrable looting is and when it will be stoped or why it has not. Then pan to an image of people stuck in ther attic or roof top for days now. Or the Astrodome witch seems to be another horrable situation.
Have you (the newscasters included) seen the total distruction. These folks are desperate. They dont know what the future brings. Yea, the electronics and jewlery are useless to them to some degree but not entirly. That may be the only help they receive.
Is it right? Well it just may be. I dont really know. I do know that I feel the portayal of looters for this crisis is for added drama.
What do people say that they missed most when a house burns down or the like? How about pictures, letters, and other personal items. are looters taking famly photo albums? I dont think so.
I feel for those people.
I can imagine myself in that situation. Poor most of my life. Then my whole city basicly gone. Not a place to go. Scary dark. I would be the first to finda gun, and get food and water. Maby way more than I needed. Then I would take oppertunity to improve myself…
Ahh what the hell…
Maby I am wrong and will change my mind in a day or so. I just get burned up when I see peole are taking the moral highground and make looting expecially in this situtaion some sort of sub-human crime. I think that in this case it may be as human and normal as anyhting else we have seen.
I understand the mentality that would cause people to loot, especially if it’s for necessary supplies like water and food. But it’s hard to sympathize too much, as this hurricane wasn’t a sudden disaster. The city had plenty of warning, the people knew a hurricane was coming. If they wanted to stock up and stay home, they should’ve done that before the disaster. This just makes them look like opportunists who waited until everything would be “free.”
I don’t really see it. People were foolish not to leave, but it’s so normal for people to think that something really tragic won’t happen that it doesn’t bother me.
If there are people who are so cheap they’d sit through a hurricane just for the chance to swim to the store and grab free food, I have to applaud their commitment to penny-pinching. But this idea hadn’t crossed my mind; I don’t think it looks that way. Maybe for the people stealing valuable shit…
Natural disasters always bring out the worst in pundits (including ourselves). We sit in our nice dry living rooms, watching the disaster unfold on FoxNN with a nice cold beer. It’s easy to criticize some chap who’s stealing a DVD player. It’s stealing - let’s kill 'em all.
None of us have ever lived through this. No one on this board has any real conception of living through a disaster on this scale. I don’t know what I would do in this situation. Extreme situations lead people to do some very strange things. New Orleans is no exception.
Doesn’t it say somewhere in the Bible “judge ye not, lest ye be judged?”
Do those posters who keep saying the people left in New Orleans “should have left” have any concept of what conditions were like for most of them before the hurricane? Yes, there are some people who are die-hards and refused to go, but look at the pictures of the people being pulled off rooftops and apartment balconies. Sure, they were ordered to evacuate, but can you see that most of them wouldn’t have an SUV gassed up in a garage ready to go? They were told that if they couldn’t evacuate (and imagine the frustration of being told to run for your life when you don’t have any transportation) they should go to the Superdome. Which is miles from the most of the flooded neighborhoods, and not everyone could get a ride there. I saw a whole lot of elderly, frail, sick people being pulled into those helicopters and boats. Do you propose that their families should have tried to carry them to safefy before the hurricane? And while I would vote preserve human life first of all, I can understand the people who wouldn’t leave their pets behind to die because the shelters wouldn’t take them in.
As for people not needing food or supplies for a week, do you realize that they have no power and no potable water, and the temperatures are in the 90s? Most people don’t have a way to cook food, since buying a propane stove in case of emergency is not a priority for most poor families, and many of these families couldn’t have afforded to “stock up” in case of emergency. If I had hungry children and sick elderly relatives, you can bet I’d be in a grocery store “looting” for food. And maybe I’d hit a sporting goods store, too, for a way to cook the food and perhaps get a raft to float them out on. And, although I’d certainly never threaten the staff of a beleaguered hospital in order to get insulin for Granny, I’d be willing to break into a pharmacy for it.
These are people who had been told to evacuate many, many times before, and they were able to ride out those storms without much trouble. I’m not surprised that many of them, especially those with few resources to begin with, would decide to ride this one out, too. This is the storm of a lifetime. It’s not reasonable to expect that everyone in an area that size would do the exact right thing to come out of it intact.
And, of course, the poorest areas were the hardest hit. As my friend, who was lucky enough to have a working car and enough money for gas to get the hell out along with her cats and a few of her belongings, said: “It’s just more proof that God hates poor black people.”
The rest of us don’t have to add to it.
Evil and goodness…is and should not be based on poor vs rich…black vs. white. There are plenty of poor blacks who would not steal except for actual survival purposes.
As far as excusing the criminal activity by saying that the police priority is saving lives and rescueing people is true…But therefore looting should be ignored is an idiotic defense for the criminal activity imho…
I think this is the point everyone forgets. The water isn’t going to just reside… New Orleans is 10 feet BELOW sea level. It is going to take repairing the leeves, restoring some electricity and then pumping the water out. The flood water isn’t going to just drain away. The people that are there now, will have to abandon everything they have taken in order to survive. If they don’t they will most likely die of disease or dehydration.
I honestly pity the people there now, because they just aren’t comprehending how desperate things are really about to get for them.