I have heard similar stories from the third-world nations such as Nigeria and Zimbabwe. But never expected something like this to happen in the United States. Ray Nagin was the one who is responsible for the current state of affairs in New Orleans. He used the race card very cunningly. Whenever someone accused him of corruption, he claimed that he is being victimized for being an African American.
He was thoroughly on the take. From Wikipedia.
In 2014, Nagin was convicted on twenty of twenty-one charges of wire fraud, bribery, and money laundering related to bribes from city contractors before and after Hurricane Katrina[3][4][5][6] and was sentenced to ten years in federal prison.[7]
I don't think the matter of the "ghost policemen" was specifically attributed to him.
Probably any of the major US liberal-progressive cities - LA, San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, etc, if they were suddenly hit like with Katrina and people tried to pick up the pieces later - any of these would show a similar level of corruption. It'd be unheard of say, for Dallas or Houston to have 1/3 non existent cops on the payroll....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEH9u26Vlhk&spfreload=10