In a city shut down for business, the Rite Aid at Oak and South Carrollton was wide open on Wednesday. Someone had stolen a forklift, driven it four blocks, peeled up the security gate and smashed through the front door.
The young and the old walked in empty-handed and walked out with armfuls of candy, sunglasses, notebooks, soda and whatever else they could need or find. No one tried to stop them.
Across New Orleans, the rule of law, like the city's levees, could not hold out after Hurricane Katrina. The desperate and the opportunistic took advantage of an overwhelmed police force and helped themselves to anything that could be carried, wheeled or floated away, including food, water, shoes, television sets, sporting goods and firearms.
Many people with property brought out their own shotguns and sidearms. Many without brought out shopping carts. The two groups have moved warily in and out of each other's paths for the last three days, and the rising danger has kept even some rescue efforts from proceeding.
Because the New Orleans police were preoccupied with search and rescue missions, sheriff's deputies and state police from around Louisiana began to patrol the city, some holding rifles as they rolled through the streets in an armored vehicle.
But on Wednesday night, the mayor ordered about 1,500 city police officers, nearly the entire force, back to their traditional roles.
The looters "are starting to get closer to heavily populated areas," Mayor C. Ray Nagin told The Associated Press, "hotels, hospitals, and we're going to stop it right now."
Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said she was "furious" about the looting.
"What angers me the most is disasters tend to bring out the best in everybody, and that's what we expected to see," Ms. Blanco said at a news conference. "Instead, it brought out the worst."
All sizes and types of stores, from Wal-Mart to the Rite Aid to the St. Vincent de Paul thrift shop, turned into bazaars of free merchandise.
Some frightened homeowners took security into their own hands.
John Carolan was sitting on his porch in the thick, humid darkness just before midnight Tuesday when three or four young men, one with a knife and another with a machete, stopped in front of his fence and pointed to the generator humming in the front yard, he said.
One said, "We want that generator," he recalled.
"I fired a couple of rounds over their heads with a .357 Magnum," Mr. Carolan recounted Wednesday. "They scattered."
He smiled and added, "You've heard of law west of the Pecos. This is law west of Canal Street."
Though no one excused the stealing, many officials were careful not to depict every looter as a petty thief.
"Had New York been closed off on 9/11, who can say what they would have done?" said Cynthia Hedge-Morrell, vice president of the New Orleans City Council. "When there's no food, no water, no sanitation, who can say what you'd do? People were trying to protect their children. I don't condone lawlessness, but this doesn't represent the generous people of New Orleans."
One woman outside a Sav-a-Center on Tchoupitoulas Street was loading food, soda, water, bread, peanut butter and canned food into the trunk of a gray Oldsmobile.
"Yes, in a sense it's wrong, but survival is the name of the game," said the woman, who would not identify herself. "I've got six grandchildren. We didn't know this was going to happen. The water is off. We're trying to get supplies we need."
Jimmy Field, one of the state's five public service commissioners, said supply and repair trucks were being slowed down by people looking for food and water. Some would not go on without police escorts.
"Right now we're hoping for more federal assistance to get the level of civil disturbance down," Mr. Field said.
One police officer was shot Tuesday trying to stop looting, but he was expected to survive.
An emergency medical vehicle that was taking a Baton Rouge police officer who had been shot last month from a hospital back to his hometown was shot at on the way out of New Orleans on Tuesday.
East Baton Rouge Parish officials agreed to send 20 buses with special weapons and tactics officers to help evacuate New Orleanians, but only if a state trooper was also placed on each bus. The plan was scuttled.
"I told them I don't mind committing drivers and vehicles, but I wasn't going to put our people in harm's way," said Walter Monsour, the chief administrative officer of the parish.
Besides the strain of having to rescue survivors, the police are bereft of much of their equipment, buildings and essential communications. The Police Department was scheduled to receive new radios on Wednesday night to coordinate its activities, said Lt. Col. Mark S. Oxley, a spokesman for the state police.
Charles C. Foti Jr., the Louisiana attorney general, said a temporary detention center and courthouse would be established somewhere outside New Orleans. "We will be ready to accept you in our system, and teach you about rules and order," Mr. Foti warned looters.
On Tuesday, the state police sent in 200 troopers trained in riot control, said Lt. Lawrence J. McLeary, a spokesman for the state police.
He said that the "nervous energy" in New Orleans reminded him of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "I've never seen anything like that in Louisiana," Lieutenant McLeary said.
With no officers in sight, people carried empty bags, shopping carts and backpacks through the door of the Rite Aid on Wednesday and left with them full. The forklift was still in the doorway. As they came and went, the looters nodded companionably to one another.
Paul Cosma, 47, who owns a nearby auto shop, stood outside it along with a reporter and photographer he was taking around the neighborhood. He had pistols on both hips.
Suddenly, he stepped forward toward a trio of young men and grabbed a pair of rusty bolt cutters out of the hands of one of them. The young man pulled back, glaring.
Mr. Cosma, never claiming any official status, eventually jerked the bolt cutters away, saying, "You don't need these."
The young man and his friends left, continuing the glare. A few minutes later, they returned and mouthed quiet oaths at Mr. Cosma, and his friend Art DePodesta, an Army veteran, who was carrying a shotgun and a pistol.
Mr. Cosma stared back, saying nothing. Between the two sides, a steady trickle of looters came and went, barely giving any of them a look. 
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