Chad Perez's Treading Water Tells the Untold Story of New Orleans Police After Hurricane Katrina
“When I realized police work is what I do. It’s not who I am.”
Chad Perez, author of Treading Water
Chad Perez was a young New Orleans police officer on vacation when Hurricane Katrina grew in the Gulf. He drove back into the city anyway. Twenty-one years later, Treading Water tells the story of the five days that followed, the version he says was never told.
The only car heading into the city
Clip · Chad Perez on driving into the storm · 33s
His supervisor told him to stay on vacation. Something told Chad this storm would be different. He borrowed a friend’s car and started driving east while the rest of the region headed west.
“I was the only car on interstate 10 heading into the city, which was pretty eerie.”
— Chad Perez
At a state trooper roadblock about 30 miles out, he showed his police ID from behind the wheel of his friend’s $130,000 Mercedes. The trooper let him through.
The officers were victims too
Clip · Chad Perez on officers who lost everything · 56s
Chad wrote the book to correct the story the country heard. A few isolated incidents took over the political narrative. What got lost was that the officers who stayed were living through the same disaster as everyone else.
“My home sat in 20 feet of water for three weeks. So the police officers that showed up with basically the clothes on their back that night to report the duty, come Monday, that’s all they owned.”
— Chad Perez
The book tells of an officer who had to shoot his way out through his attic vent to be rescued, and another who swam out of his home and showed up to work soaking wet with his dog and his badge.
Clip · Chad Perez on five days without reinforcements · 30s
“We had to break, literally break into a Walmart so that we had food to eat, water to drink, and that we had clothes to put on our back.”
— Chad Perez
Reinforcements did not arrive until Saturday. For five days, the officers who stayed survived on what they could find.
No playbook, so the middle stepped up
Clip · Chad Perez on leading with no playbook · 39s
With leadership at the top missing, the department was held together by its captains, lieutenants, and sergeants.
“So a handful of leaders stepped up and improvised and made decisions. They were not afraid to make decisions, decisions that saved lives, and really saved the city because there was nobody above them making those decisions.”
— Chad Perez
Clip · Chad Perez on the strength of middle management · 23s
After retiring from the force, Chad built a security services company to 400 people. He carried one lesson from Katrina into it.
“One of the things I took from that was the strength of middle management.”
— Chad Perez
A box of medals, framed
Clip · Chad Perez on the medals his wife framed · 52s
When Chad left law enforcement in 2012, he stopped talking about his career. His son was four and has no memory of his dad on the SWAT team. Every so often a story slipped out at a family event, and his wife and father-in-law told him it needed to be a book.
“And then I came home one day from work and she had, I had a lot of awards and medals and things like that and just put in a box and she had them all framed and, you know, I hadn’t looked at them in years, like years.”
— Chad Perez
They are still framed today.
Writing it took him places he didn’t know he needed to go
Clip · Chad Perez on why writing it was therapeutic · 28s
Chad set out to tell what happened on the ground in those five days, and that is still the heart of the book. By the time he finished, it had become much more than that.
“I can tell you that writing that book took me to places I didn’t know I needed to go to, and it was therapeutic.”
— Chad Perez
More than once, he had to get up and walk away from the page because a scene was too emotional.
From police reports to a book
Clip · Chad Perez on going from police reports to a book · 44s
“I knew how to write a police report. I had written plenty investigative reports, right? Very long, detailed reports. I had never written a book. I didn’t know where to start.”
— Chad Perez
He found Scribe Media while searching online for help, watched the videos, and decided the process was right for him. What he brought in looked nothing like the finished book.
“And it was just a hodgepodge of memories, right? This happened and that happened. Oh, wait, this happened before that and this happened before that.”
— Chad Perez
Working with Scribe to put those events in order and shape them into what the book is today, he says, “was amazing.”
His advice: get your story out there
Clip · Chad Perez on getting your story out there · 59s
Chad has lost count of the people who have told him they could write a book about something. His answer is always the same: do it.
“So when it comes to telling a story and writing a book, don’t think you have to get it perfect, get with somebody like Scribe that can help you put these thoughts together and then just get it out there.”
— Chad Perez
He believes the more officers tell their own stories, the more Americans will see the people behind the uniform. “I would say every police officer I’ve ever worked has a story, has a book in them that needs to be told.”
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