New Orleans PD

NOPD vehicles pull boats

NOPD-vehicles-pull-boats200.jpg

Capt. Tim Bayard, commander of the Vice and Narcotics Division, was also pressed into service running boat rescue operations.  His team used police boats, borrowed boats, even commandeered boats.  Bayard described what he saw after the hurricane passed:  "It was just water.  That's all you saw.  Water and people, people begging for help, guys floating around on mattresses."

drained street in 9th Ward

Bayard's improvised boat crews, comprised mainly of narcotics and vice detectives, worked around the clock for days on end.  On each trip into the city's flooded neighborhoods, terrified residents jammed into the boats, sometimes threatening to swamp them.  "I can't believe they were even floating," Bayard says.  "I think we broke every Coast Guard rule they had.  But the people were scared.  They wanted to get out.  We had to do what we had to do."