Martial Law in LA & Katrina

I decided to start a new thread based on martial law after reading the Jindal thread.

I'm wondering if any of you can shed some light on martial law in LA?

"Contrary to many media reports at the time, martial law was not declared in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, because no such term exists in Louisiana state law. However, a State of Emergency was declared, which does give unique powers to the state government similar to those of martial law. On the evening of August 31, 2005, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin nominally declared "martial law" and said that officers don't have to worry about civil rights and Miranda rights in stopping the looters."

What worries me is no one seems to know what is going on. I had several police tell me during Post Katrina we were under Martial Law. Now this was immediately after & I'm not anti-police. Those guys were dealing with a lot of things including little to no communications. Also there were some reserves & wannabes that may not represent the cream of the crop anyway. So I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to the large majority of the police officers as well as the respect that they deserve. Same for Firemen, one bad apple doesn't cost any respect for the rest.
None the less I had several officers tell us its martial law you can shoot people if you have to. Didn't sound right to me. I explained to everyone we were not about to shoot anyone unless it was a last resort and the same guy who told us that would probably deny he ever told you that after he arrested you. Problems with people were almost non existent as there were not many people anyway. I got to see my community as a ghost town. It was pretty weird.
Fast forward to the last 3 months. I have had several elected officials say that next time martial law would be declared and then continue on about what would occur. When I asked them how martial law was put into effect & by who because it supposedly doesn't exist in LA they had no answer.
Can the president declare martial law in LA but not the Governor? Does the governor have to turn over control to some federal level. Is it just never a possibility?
I surely don't know.
RDO

Excellent question!

I haven't really thought much about it (yet), and I do not know the answer. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me will be along shortly to tell us. Hopefully they can cite codes so we can see exactly what the deal is.

Funny this popped up, today while I was at work I decided to catch up on some episodes of Tom Gresham's Guntalk. Well on this particular episode Tom wan't there, he had a guy by the name of Dave Workman replacing him. In the second hour of the show Dave brought on Gordon Hutchinson, who co-authored the book, "The Great New Orleans Gun Grab." He shed some light on the martial law situation and on the firearm confiscation, can't remember it all right now but, seems like a good book. If you want to her the interview, Guntalk is available on Itunes under podcasts, they are free and this particular episode is from 09/16/07 Part B Here is the link to the book http://www.neworleansgungrab.com/ Guntalk is a very informative show done weekly, if you don't already listen to it, I strongly encourage you to do so. Plus Tom is a Louisiana native from Shreveport