Meanwhile, despite the dire situation in New Orleans, the mayor, Ray Nagin has ordered almost every one of the city’s 1,500 police officers to leave their search-and-rescue mission Wednesday night and return to the streets to stop people from taking goods from stores and businesses. In some cases, violence has broken out as people looted stores. Several businesses report having their entire stock of guns and other weapons taken and police officials report armed gangs roaming the streets. Desperate people on Wednesday chased down a state police truck full of food, while city officials themselves were commandeering equipment from a looted Office Depot. In defending his decision to call the police off of rescue missions, the mayor said “It’s really difficult because my opinion of the looting is it started with people running out of food, and you can’t really argue with that too much.” But last night, he issued a statement to the AP saying: “They are starting to get closer to the heavily populated areas–hotels, hospitals, and we’re going to stop it right now.”