The economic incentive was enormous. The Iberville housing project alone—which stood on priceless land between the French Quarter and Tremé—would over time be worth hundreds of millions to the right developers. And the old housing authority projects weren’t the only targets. Six weeks ago, Governor Blanco had lifted the ban on evictions, and landlords lost no time using “unpaid rent” as an excuse to kick out “undesirable” tenants who had fled the city for safer ground. With New Orleans’s poorest residents relocated to other cities, black leaders had lost the heart of their constituencies. With luck, regulations would soon be passed that would focus rebuilding efforts on those areas that fell in line with the vision shared by those who would own the future. Areas like the Lower Ninth Ward would initially be left to rot, while those with immediate “gentrification” potential would be exploited by eager developers. Eventually the dead zones would be bulldozed flat and the wreckage hauled away. Sparkling new homes would rise from the ruins, homes that attracted the kind of people who knew how to work and live in harmony with each other.

But for this vision to be made real, America would have to buy into the notion that New Orleans was safe—and open for business. The NOPD was about the last agency on earth capable of accomplishing that objective. Historically, the city had always accepted a certain amount of police corruption (the French Quarter’s reputation as a den of iniquity being one of its main attractions), but since the 1970s the city had descended ever farther and faster down a slope from whence there seemed no return. By 1993 New Orleans led the nation in homicides, and its police force had become so ineffectual that the Justice Department considered federalizing it. Two years later, after four NOPD officers were charged with murder, a black female cop had executed her former partner and two Vietnamese children during an armed robbery. As the sickening details of that crime emerged, Louisianans began to realize that this sordid affair was only the tip of a submerged volcano. Yet it would be another ten years before Katrina swept in like the wrath of God and accomplished what mortal men could not.