you certainly cant count on the police to tell you the truth!!! Original Article Rapes, murders likely exaggerated Michelle Roberts Associated Press Sept. 28, 2005 12:00 AM NEW ORLEANS - On Sept. 1, with desperate Hurricane Katrina evacuees crammed into the convention center, Police Chief Eddie Compass reported: "We have individuals who are getting raped; we have individuals who are getting beaten." Five days later, he told Oprah Winfrey that babies were being raped. On the same show, Mayor Ray Nagin warned: "They have people standing out there, have been in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people." The ugliest reports - children with slit throats, women dragged off and raped, corpses piling up in the basement - soon became a searing image of post-Katrina New Orleans. The stories were told by residents trapped inside the Superdome and convention center and were repeated by public officials. Many news organizations, including The Associated Press, carried the witness accounts and official pronouncements, and in some cases later repeated the claims as fact, without attribution. But now, a month after the chaos subsided, police are re-examining the reports and finding that many of them have little or no basis in fact. They have no official reports of rape and no eyewitnesses to sexual assault. The state Department of Health and Hospitals counted 10 dead at the Superdome and four at the convention center. Only two of those are believed to have been murdered. Sally Forman, a spokeswoman for Nagin, said the mayor was relying on others for his information about conditions at the evacuation sites. "He was listening to officials, trusting that information they were providing was accurate," she said. To be sure, conditions at both sites were chaotic. Water was rising around the Superdome, home to 20,000 evacuees. Toilets were backing up, garbage was rotting, fights were breaking out. Food was in short supply at the convention center, where about 19,000 people took shelter from the rising waters. The temperature was climbing. The elderly and very young were desperate for food, water and medicine. Police said they saw muzzle flashes at the convention center, and a National Guard member was shot in the leg when an evacuee tried to take his gun. A week after the floodwaters poured into the city, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans quoted an Arkansas National Guardsman as saying that soldiers had discovered 30 to 40 bodies inside a freezer in the convention center's food area. Guardsman Mikel Brooks told the newspaper that some of the dead appeared to have met violent ends, including "a 7-year-old with her throat cut." When the convention center was swept, however, no such pile of bodies was found. Lt. Col. John Edwards, the staff judge advocate for the 39th Infantry Brigade of the Arkansas National Guard, said Tuesday that Brooks told the Times-Picayune reporter only that he had heard rumors of bodies in the freezer, not that he had actually seen them. "We have never found anybody who has any first-hand knowledge of dozens of bodies in the refrigerator," Edwards said. He said Brooks was unavailable for comment. Thibodeaux said his guard unit received no reports of rape. New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan said officials at the morgue in St. Gabriel have identified four apparent homicide victims from the city. All were shot and all were adults. Police arrested one person on suspicion of attempted sexual assault but received no official reports of rape. Judy Benitez, executive director of the Louisiana Foundation Against Sexual Assault, cautioned that it might be too soon to say whether there really were rapes at the evacuation sites.