Katrina survivors play defense against looting

The two men poking through the wreckage that still litters Lake Catherine island looked pretty much like the local Katrina survivors, some of whom still scavenge for necessities. But islander Marty Mayeur had his suspicions - especially when he saw the men rolling up the expensive power cable laid down earlier by lineworkers down the road.

Mr. Mayeur urged a passing sheriff's deputy to check out their story that they were contractors working on the power lines. By the time the deputy came screaming back in her cruiser, Mayeur says, the would-be looters had fled, but without the cable.

The riotous looting that swept the area right after hurricane Katrina is long gone, but in its place is opportunistic - even organized - thievery of everything from construction tools to carved mantelpieces of damaged homes.

"We're still in early recovery, and this type of post- looting has become a real problem," says criminologist William Thornton of Loyola University in New Orleans, noting that many looters drive in from out of state. "All our small law-enforcement agencies are spread thin and really hurting because their tax base is no longer in existence."

The overall crime rate along the Louisiana-Mississippi border has doubled in recent months even as violent crime has dropped 80 percent since the storm, according to the New Orleans Police Department. Property crimes are a major part of that surge, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) told the Associated Press recently.

In response, police and area residents throughout the storm-damaged region are taking some unusual steps to prevent looting.

• In Louisiana's St. Bernard Parish, the sheriff department proposed hiring 100 private security guards from DynCorp, the same company that provides security in Iraq, to work alongside deputies.

• Here in the tightly knit Lake Catherine neighborhood of Orleans Parish, one determined resident tried setting up a roadblock to turn away vehicles driven by strangers - an illegal stunt that in ordinary times might have landed him in jail.

• Elsewhere, returning residents have marshalled neighborhood forces to look out for looters and marauders. Some have spray-painted dire warnings - such as "Looters will be drawn and quartered" - on the sides of garages and stranded boats. Along the Belle Chasse Highway in Plaquemines, one resident set out what might be called a "looter scarecrow": a bearded dummy with a fake rifle across his lap and a "No Trespassing" sign at his feet.

Sometimes, thieves depart as residents return. Tommy Ford, a resident of Chalmette, La., says the looters used to come at night on four-wheel all-terrain vehicles. When residents began to come back in January, turning on their front-porch lights as night fell, the activity moved away.

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