Can I speculate a little? Can I just ask a question?

I’m no wild-eyed conspiracy theorist. I don’t see evil white folks or evil Republicans lurking under every rock or in every closet. Readers of my BlackAmericaWeb.com column know that.

Still, I have to ask the question, since Lord knows the black leaders and spokespersons fretting about the use of the word “refugee” or how much President George W. Bush cares about black people won’t ask it: Are we sure the levee that broke and caused New Orleans to flood was breached as the result of a natural disaster?

I posed the question to a colleague who sent me some stories about a police department in suburban New Orleans whose motto clearly was something other than to protect and serve, at least when it came to residents of The Big Easy.

When people tried to escape from New Orleans -- you know, the city that was flooding — into safety in nearby Gretna, cops were allegedly waiting to stop them. Some witnesses said police pointed shotguns at the crowd and even fired shots over their heads. According to accounts, the police chief of the department not only confirmed the account, he supported what the officers did.

What they did was turn away people from a flooded city, telling them in essence they could go back and drown, for all they cared. Common human decency didn’t kick in. Either these police officers — and I call them that guardedly -- either flunked Human Decency 101 or just never bothered to take the course.

It occurred to me that folks who think that way certainly wouldn’t have a problem with sabotaging one of the levees surrounding New Orleans if they could be assured many residents would drown.

But the reaction of the cops wasn’t the only thing that led to my question. About the same time the colleague was emailing me the stories, I was interviewing a New Orleans woman who’s now staying with a family in Baltimore County. She, her two sisters and three nieces were rescued from the roof of a three-story building and spent three days at the Superdome before being evacuated to Dallas.

The woman told me that on the night of the storm, her family did some praying, and then they all went to sleep. They woke up the next morning and ate breakfast. The only damage Hurricane Katrina had done to the house was to blow some shingles off the roof. The woman I interviewed said she went back to sleep. When she awoke several hours later the water was rising and rising fast.

This family had means to leave New Orleans. The woman I interviewed had a car. So did other members of her family. But they figured they could ride out the storm. And guess what? They -- and thousands of other New Orleans residents -- did ride out the storm.

Was that storm -- which just blew the shingles off the roof of one house -- strong enough to break a levee? I’m no engineering expert. It just might be possible. I just want somebody -- oh, say, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, for instance -- to ask some questions.

Exactly when was that levee breached? During the storm? After the storm? What caused it? Was it, as we’ve been told, a storm surge? And who’s doing the checking?

Now might be the proper time to say who I don’t want doing the checking. The police in Gretna are clearly out of the question.

Others who should not be in the loop are New Orleans government officials. Louisiana state officials can take a walk as well. Ditto for federal government officials. All three levels of government failed the people of New Orleans.

There are no doubt experts on levees -- and what causes them to break -- all over the world. I say black folks here in the United States should hire some. When we’re making donations for Katrina’s victims, we should kick in a little extra to pay the experts on our own “Why’d The Levee Break?” commission.

There should be at least five independent teams of experts, one not from the United States. No government workers allowed. Anyone who doesn’t like the investigation, who feels it’s unnecessary and that it’s just a sign of paranoid conspiracy theorists should remember one thing.

Had it not been for some suburban police officers outside New Orleans, I never would have brought the question up.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: In a story posted earlier this week, black Louisiana State Sen. Ann Duplessis dismissed the Gretna story as untrue, telling BlackAmericaWeb.com “I’m never going to be tired of hearing concerns of people because those concerns can be real. But it is our responsibility to make sure that once we hear something, we do our due diligence and do further investigation.”)