National Guard troops roll into New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, June 21 (Reuters) National Guard troops rolled into New Orleans in support of a police force struggling to keep peace in a city still badly damaged by Hurricane Katrina and reeling from the weekend slaying of five teens.

Dozens of tan and camouflaged Humvees converged near the banks of the Mississippi River where commanders gave orders to secure the ghostly neighborhoods most devastated by the storm.

''If the criminals control, our families won't return,'' Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told about 100 Guard soldiers and about 60 state police who will take their posts by last evening. Two hundred more Guard troops are due within a week.

Guardsmen and women from around the nation were called in after Katrina to secure the city and quell looting, but they departed in February.

A rising murder rate, the return of drugs and the killing of five teens on Saturday galvanized officials to accelerate their plan to reinforce city police over the summer.

Families preparing for the new school year, evacuees losing housing vouchers outside the city and construction workers are expected to arrive over the next few months as the sultry hurricane season reaches its peak.

''It is going to be a long, hot summer,'' predicted police chief Warren Riley. The city needed an ''overwhelming show of force,'' Mayor Ray Nagin added.

There is a growing sense in New Orleans the post-storm calm has lifted even before the city can completely recover.

Only about 220,000 people, or half the pre-storm population, has come home to New Orleans, leaving many streets dark and increasingly dangerous.

Police say the 54 murders so far this year is down substantially from 2005, but the homicide rate, a measure taking into account the population, is about the same.

''Crime has always been a part of New Orleans, as long as I've been alive,'' said Sgt. Greg White, a 36-year-old guardsman from New Orleans.

Sitting behind the wheel of a sand-colored Humvee, he said most of his team had helped secure the city after Katrina.

''It's pretty much business as usual,'' said White, a train conductor in civilian life.

The troops will fan out to three of the most storm-ravaged and least-populated sections of town, the lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans East and Lakeview, so city police can concentrate on the neighborhoods returning to life fastest.

State police, meanwhile, have been assigned to protect the French Quarter, the key tourist center. Officials rejected the idea that the call for troops would unnerve visitors.

FIVE KILLED IN A NIGHT But residents are wary since violence erupted before dawn on Saturday in an attack police believe was revenge and/or drug-related.

One or more assailants with semi-automatic handguns sprayed a sports utility vehicle, killing a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old and three 19-year-olds, said police, who found the vehicle slammed into a utility pole, surrounded by shell casings.

Before the storm, New Orleans had a high crime rate. But the evacuation after Katrina arrived on August 29, flooding 80 percent of the city, forced both the criminal element and its potential victims out.

New Orleans residents and city and state officials are looking desperately for a silver lining from the disaster, aiming to build a safer city with better public services and a stronger economy.

But rebuilding and even destruction of crazily tilting houses has been slow, potholes still bedevil motorists and nearly every neighborhood has streets piled high with storm debris.

REUTERS PDS BST0541