Getting worked up about violations of prisoner's civil rights isn't always easy. After all, they were found guilty and sentenced - they're criminals, right? Why should anyone get worked up if some rapist or child molestor gets the rough end of the stick while in prison?
But what if I told you the prisoners in question were arrested for such minor offenses as sleeping in public, begging and public intoxication? What about if they were never actually found guilty but are still waiting to be brought before a judge? Even if found guilty, they would only have spent 10 days at most in jail. Many would have been released on bond and some would never have been prosecuted. What if many of these prisoners are being abused in custody and seem to have been arrested on trumped-up charges just to provide cheap work-crews for messy, back-breaking and oftimes hazardous clean-up duties?
Would you feel differently then?
In the last couple of days, two worrying reports of exactly such civil rights abuses have come out of Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
The first comes from Human Rights Watch, who claim that 6 weeks after they should have been set free, hundreds of detainees arrested for minor offenses before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans remain behind bars. More than a month after the storm, they have still not been brought before a judge. When Katrina hit, more than 8,500 prisoners from the hardest hit area were dispersed to jails and prisons throughout the State and beyond - prisoners who were mostly being held for minor municipal offenses or misdemeanors such as public intoxication, disorderly conduct, sleeping in a public place, traffic violations, or even reading tarot cards without a license.
"People entitled to freedom remain behind bars because public officials are putting up obstacles instead of restoring justice after the hurricane,"said Corinne Carey, a lawyer and researcher for Human Rights Watch. "Keeping people locked up six weeks after the storm for petty offenses they may not have even committed makes a mockery of due process."
Louisiana court and prison officails aren't simply being slow, however, they are actively impeding the release of those who should be free.
In habeas and civil rights proceedings brought on behalf of some 200 prisoners, the state"s attorney general, the district attorney, and the department of corrections all argued that the court should delay releasing those who served their time until they could demonstrate that they had somewhere to go when they were released. There is no requirement under Louisiana law, however, that those released after serving their sentence inform authorities of where they intend to go.
A spokeswoman for the department of corrections told the Times-Picayune last week that the department was concerned about the "wave"of prisoners being released into communities throughout Louisiana with "no place to go."In habeas proceedings in one municipal court, the corrections department has said it would release people in alphabetical order, 35 or so a day, excluding weekends.
"If the department adopts the same position for detainees entitled to release,"said Carey, "this will mean more than a month of additional unnecessary confinement for those at the end of the list."
Yet even this reach beyond the law for reasons to hold prisoners for months might be but a flimsy screen for a more cynical and immoral reason - cheap forced labor.
Cue the second report, from intrepid New Standard editor Jessica Azulay who has the guts to go where reporters from far bigger media outlets fear to tread.
The New Standard reports that the "videotaped beating of a New Orleans resident offers but a small sample of the widespread brutality, deprivation and railroading that have come to characterize the city’s response to alleged crimes." Azulay gained access to what the police in New Orleans call "Camp Amtrak" - an improvised jail in what used to be the New Orleans bus terminal - where over a thousand people have already been held.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans authorities are arresting hundreds on minor charges such as breaking curfew or public intoxication, housing them in brutal conditions and then pushing them through a court process that forces most into working on clean-up projects at police facilities, according to numerous interviews and documents obtained by TNS.
At the converted Greyhound terminal, which now serves as a different kind of way station, no passengers arrive with luggage. Instead, police bring people in and book them at what used to be a ticket counter. In the back, where travelers used to board buses, police now push detainees into wire pens where they sleep on the concrete in the open air.
In interviews both inside and outside of Camp Amtrak, people who had been through the process told harrowing accounts of police brutality and harsh conditions. Some of them, like Davis, had visible injuries. Many said police had attacked them or others in their cells with pepper spray. All recounted trying to sleep on the concrete floor of the bus parking lot with just one blanket – or in some cases no blanket – to protect them from the cold and the mosquitoes which swoop in on randomly alternating nights here. None was given a phone call or access to an attorney.
Azulay also documents instances where the NOLA police have been, shall we say, overzealous
Jack, a black immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, said police had arrested him on his own property and charged him with violating curfew, which in most neighborhoods here is still in affect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.
"I was in my yard, and a young white guy came by the gate and I was talking to him and the police came and arrested both of us," he recounted. "He was outside breaking curfew; I was inside… behind the gate. The police broke my gate down with a pick-ax. They broke it completely off the fence."
Even volunteers on relief work aren't safe - and it appears that racism has again reared its ugly head in the deep South:
Sandy Freelander, a relief volunteer from Wisconsin, was also one of the hundreds arrested. He said that he and two friends – one a New Orleanian widely known here for having helped rescue hundreds of people in the Seventh Ward during the flooding – were detained by police in a parking lot last Thursday. He said that they were on their knees with their hands behind their heads when a police officer attacked his friend.
"This middle-aged white [police officer] got real excited about kicking Reggae, Freelander said. "He came running across the parking lot and kicked [Reggae] in the hip while [Reggae] was down on his knees with his hands behind his head. [The officer] pushed [Reggae] on the ground and put his foot to the back of his neck and pointed his gun at him and said he was going to blow his fucking brains out if he moved again. This guy was really excited about beating up the first black guy he saw or something."
Once arrested, prisoners are kept in open-air wire pens with a single blanket each, subject to "random" use of pepper spray, and are pressured into pleading guilty - being told if they pled guilty right now they would get 40 hours "community service" as opposed to the weeks or even months wait in Hunts Correctional Facility for judicial process if they pled not-guilty. On pleading guilty, they are set to cleaning up prisons, court houses and police stations.
It seems clear, then, that Louisiana police, court and prison officials have abandoned due process for a return to the bad old days when gangs of black Americans could be forced into work on flood cleanups at gunpoint. This atrocious abuse of human rights must stop and pressure should be exerted on the Governor to put her house in order. Likewise, the federal government and FEMA should be pressured to act. That such things can happen in America in this age is shameful and will do nothing to help the U.S's image, already tarnished by the scandals of Abu Graib, Gitmo and elsewhere. All people of compassion, wherever they stand on the political spectrum, should be vocal in their disgust at these barbaric practices.
postscript
The New Standard is an online news source who believe their job is "to keep track of those in power and to convey challenges to their authority." They provide straight-talking coverage that you won't get from the mainstream on labor issues, foreign affairs, civil rights and homeland security as well as much more. The New Standard is one of my daily reads and it should be one of yours too. Please, give it a try and consider donating to their efforts - they exist purely on private donations and are beholden to no advertiser or corporate backer. Thanks. -C
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