Officers back from Mississippi

Jen Lawson

Wednesday, Sept. 21, 2005 | 11:03 a.m.

Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Charlie Haycox had his own welcoming committee when he and about 100 other Nevada law enforcement officers returned after spending two weeks helping Mississippi police in the hurricane-ravaged region.

"That's him," Karen Haycox-Smith said and snapped a picture with her cell phone camera when she spotted her brother's cruiser in the caravan of police vehicles as it pulled into the parking lot of the Fiesta Henderson.

Families were encouraged to reunite with the officers at the Highway Patrol headquarters or Metro Police 's Downtown Area Command instead of the Fiesta, which was meant for the media, but Haycox's sister, mother and wife, Melissa, couldn't wait.

"When they left (on Sept. 4) we parked on the highway and they all honked because they knew we were family," his mother, Lucy Haycox, said, holding a digital camera. "We got a beautiful picture of him leaving."

"He's a darling," she said of her son. "His father would be so proud of him. He was a policeman for 41 years."

Metro Deputy Chief Ted Moody, who was in charge of the Mississippi mission, emerged and led the officers toward the waiting, applauding crowd, which consisted mainly of fellow law enforcement officers and reporters.

Sheriff Bill Young stepped forward and welcomed Moody.

"Sheriff, thanks for coming out," Moody said and the two hugged.

After reuniting with his family, Charlie Haycox, a trooper for two years and a police officer in New Mexico for 10 years before that, described what he saw.

"It looks like a nuclear bomb went off," he said. "There would be signs for Olive Garden, KFC, Sonic's, McDonald's, but the buildings are gone. How would you like to drive up to a bank and see nothing but a vault?"

The Nevada Response Team, consisting of officers with the Department of Public Safety, Metro, Henderson and North Las Vegas Police, Las Vegas marshals and Northern Nevada law enforcement agencies assisted police in Jackson and Harrison Counties, some of the hardest hit areas.

They began patrolling the cities of Biloxi, Gulfport, Pascagoula and Moss Point on Sept. 10, relieving the officers in those areas and performing basic law enforcement duties.

The Mississippi police officers and citizens were welcoming and appreciated their work, Haycox said.

"They've lost lives, they've lost family, they're lost everything," he said.

He said the officers met citizens whose dogs drowned in their cages at a veterinary office, and a couple who emerged from the roof of their two-story house to find an alligator eating a deer in the living room.

More people didn't evacuate because they didn't imagine it would be worse than Hurricane Camille in 1969, the most devastating storm to hit the Gulf before Katrina.

As Haycox spoke to a reporter, Metro Police Officer Gerard Bello approached him and asked for his phone number. On the trip the pair discovered they knew each other -- they worked together several years ago in New Mexico.

Bello said he was in New York after the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

"Take the devastation and damage in New York and magnify that 100 times," he said. "It was just everywhere. It was out of control."

Young said he is proud of the officers and hoped to learn from them.

"It would be an invaluable exercise to draw upon those 100 officers' experiences," he said.