When disaster strikes and people are forced to leave their homes, there is always a group of people who want to take advantage of someone’s misfortune by entering the abandoned homes and helping themselves to whatever they can find that will turn a quick buck or be swapped for drugs.

There are also people who are fascinated by disasters and decide they want to get a close look at the scene, almost to the point of endangering their lives, the lives of their companions and the people who have rescue them when they go too far.

Those were some of the concerns for police and sheriff’s deputies as local law enforcement agencies prepared their strategy to protect lives and property as people in areas like Ford Subdivision, the Kings community and Chickasaw left their properties for higher land and shelter as flood waters from the Mississippi River began creeping in.

And a strange thing happened.

According to police, there have been few reports of people trying to break into homes in the flooded areas or people ignoring the barricades and marked patrols cars to “get their feet wet” to take pictures with their smart phones and digital cameras.

The reason for the lack of problems was the vigilance and activity of police officers and sheriff’s deputies in the affected areas and the behavior of our citizens.

For law enforcement, extra officers were on duty to provide a higher level of protection. In the city, officers who would normally be off duty worked special shifts in the flooded areas, manning stations in Ford and Kings with another unit patrolling the drier areas of both neighborhoods.

In the south, off U.S. 61 South, police on ATVs and four-wheelers patrolled a raised railroad bed looking for problems.

In the northern part of the county, sheriff’s deputies have kept a 24-hour patrol in the Eagle Lake community and patrolled flooded areas in the county and the city by boat. That type of law enforcement visibility is a good deterrent against crime.

The residents behaved themselves by staying at home rather than trying to get into mischief, or went to safe areas like Louisiana Circle off Washington Street or to good vantage points downtown to look at the flooding.

The work of our law enforcement agencies and the behavior of our citizens during this particular disaster should be commended. The police and deputies did their job to keep things safe, and the citizens cooperated and supported them.

Based on early predictions, there is a chance we may go through a second flood in the spring. Hopefully, that won’t happen. If it does, we hope law enforcement and our citizens will repeat their performances from this time.