New Orleans: (locked up) Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters

[donsu]

http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/0923-01.htm

- As Hurricane Katrina began pounding New Orleans, the sheriff's department abandoned hundreds of inmates imprisoned in the city’s jail, Human Rights Watch said today.
Inmates in Templeman III, one of several buildings in the Orleans Parish Prison compound, reported that as of Monday, August 29, there were no correctional officers in the building, which held more than 600 inmates. These inmates, including some who were locked in ground-floor cells, were not evacuated until Thursday, September 1, four days after flood waters in the jail had reached chest-level.

“Of all the nightmares during Hurricane Katrina, this must be one of the worst,” said Corinne Carey, researcher from Human Rights Watch. “Prisoners were abandoned in their cells without food or water for days as floodwaters rose toward the ceiling.”

Human Rights Watch called on the U.S. Department of Justice to conduct an investigation into the conduct of the Orleans Sheriff's Department, which runs the jail, and to establish the fate of the prisoners who had been locked in the jail. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, which oversaw the evacuation, and the Orleans Sheriff’s Department should account for the 517 inmates who are missing from list of people evacuated from the jail.
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read on, it's horrible

Justice is called for

[indepat]

1. How many of those left to die had done nothing worse than a "joint?"

[tatertop]

2. How many were waiting for trial or still waiting to be charged ?

We will never know. This is about as bad as it gets.

[Mandate My Ass]

5. Lots

Many had not even been arraigned yet. Two Ohio guys were there for public intoxication. Not only were they denied their right to a "speedy trial" (or any) but that offense carries a death penalty nowadays.

[tatertop]

6. and not one of the cops guarding these prisoners gave a shit

I just don't get it

[AirAmFan]

3. Reminds me of the Paul Newman movie, "The Drowning Pool"

The character who put the Paul Newman character at risk in that film was criminally insane. IMO, incarceration practices in this country also are criminally insane. How much do you want to bet the Orleans sheriffs who left thousands to possibly drown WON'T lose their pensions, careers in "law enforcement", or even thier jobs in NOLA? There's much more public sympathy for dogs than for the predominantly African-American people swept up by overzealous police for drug possession or fistfights.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. All part of Floodgate. R's Out 2006! Recommended for Greatest Page.