University Police and the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office responded to 62 calls during the time in which Hurricane Katrina evacuees resided in Stopher and Shaver gyms.When the evacuees began residing on the Nicholls campus, Jaccuzzo said that he expected University Police to have to take care of situations that it would not normally have to handle.

“We knew we would have to handle things we wouldn’t normally handle to keep the interest of the University in hand,” Jaccuzzo said.

Of the calls handled by the two agencies, 14 resulted in arrests according to Craig Jaccuzzo, director of University Police.

Disturbances among the evacuees that escalated into fights made up the majority of the arrests, Jaccuzzo said.

Police removed five evacuees from the shelters by order of protective custody. Jaccuzzo said that those individuals were capable of harming themselves or others because of mental illness.

The sheriff’s office made two arrests for possession of marijuana. Jaccuzzo said that was the extent of drug incidents in the shelters.

There were 17 reports of disturbances, which consisted mostly of people being loud.

The disturbances were “heated arguments that before they got out of hand, we addressed them,” Jaccuzzo said. “Some were because of intoxication and they were removed from the shelter before disturbances occurred.”

There were also four missing persons reports where evacuees were located and returned to their shelter.

Jaccuzzo said that the incidents that occurred were reasonable, considering 1,600 people were confined to a small space for an extended period of time.

“Incidents were minor and not as abundant as rumors in the community,” Jaccuzzo said. “There were no rapes, robberies or massive drug use.”

Jaccuzzo credits the evacuees with making the shelter a safe place.

“Regardless of who truly polices people, the shelter’s success and the behavior is credited to the 1,600 people,” Jaccuzzo said. “None of those people wanted violence. The true order is by their participation.