Is it a good thing for teachers to turn student teachers loose in the clroom?

I just finished my student teaching in a high school. For the first week, the teacher stayed in the room, and the students were fairly good. After that, however, the teacher left, and the kids became rude, hateful, and disruptive to the point where I could hardly conduct a cl. While I know that we are learning to be teachers, and part of that is to maintain the clroom, these inner city high school kids at the school I worked for had zero respect for me as their teacher. I was only there for a few months, and even my teacher agreed that they'd have no respect for me and see me as an intruder instead of a "real" teacher. It was all I could do to keep going each day, but I did finish as best as I could. Is it smart for teachers to desert student teachers, knowing full well the students will cause as much chaos as possible, or should the teachers remain in the clroom, as it is their clroom?