249 New Orleans Police Officers Left Posts

Nearly 250 police officers _ roughly 15 percent of the force _ could face a special tribunal because they left their posts without permission during Hurricane Katrina and the storm's chaotic aftermath, the police chief said.

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass plans to assemble a tribunal of four of his assistant chiefs to hear each case and sort the outright deserters from those with a legitimate reason for not showing up for work. In all, 249 officers were found to have been absent without permission, he said in an interview published Tuesday in The Times- Picayune.

"We have a penalty schedule for each violation, and when that process takes place, individuals will have the right to appeal the decisions made by the bureau chiefs," Compass said adding that "the final decision and recommendation will be by me as superintendent of police."

Mayor Ray Nagin said the city attorney's office will review Compass' plan to ensure that it falls within civil service regulations. Compass did not say how many of the 249 officers are asking to return. The department has about 1,700 officers.

Lt. David Benelli, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, the union for rank-and-file officers, said true deserters should be fired.

"For those who left because of cowardice, they don't need to be here," Benelli told the paper. "If you're a deserter and you deserted your post for no other reason than you were scared, then you left the department and I don't see any need for you to come back."

But Benelli said he believes only a small fraction of the officers will wind up being deserters.

"We know there were people who flat-out deserted," he said. "But we also know there were officers who had to make critical decisions about what to do with their families.

Telephone calls from The Associated Press to the police department, the mayor's office and the police union were not immediately returned on Tuesday.

At a news conference Sept. 5, Deputy Police Superintendent Warren Riley had said between 400 and 500 officers on the 1,600-member police force were unaccounted for.

Some lost their homes and some are looking for their families. "Some simply left because they said they could not deal with the catastrophe," Riley said.