[News] New Orleans Gets a Makeshift Jail

[Anti-Imperialist News]

September 7, 2005

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-jail7sep07,1,1881380,full.story?coll=la-headlines-nation


KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
September 7, 2005



KATRINA'S AFTERMATH
New Orleans Gets a Makeshift Jail
Suspects are being put in holding cells set up in the bus station. Their 
cases will be processed through a court system that is far from normal.

By Alan Zarembo, Times Staff Writer


NEW ORLEANS ­ This beleaguered city's attempt to rebuild its criminal 
justice system starts here, at the downtown Greyhound bus station.

It is now a jail.

The bus stalls are still numbered 1 to 16, but now each number hangs over a 
cage hastily constructed from chain-link fencing and razor wire.

By Tuesday afternoon, the first five cages were packed with about 100 
sweaty men and women, most of them arrested on suspicion of looting. Their 
clothes were tattered and many lacked shoes.

Alone in cage 6, Wendell L. Bailey leaned against the fence.

"They said I shot at a helicopter," he said.

Built during the weekend, the cages are a poor substitute for the massive 
city jail that was evacuated during the flood and remains largely underwater.

But after days of lawlessness, New Orleans finally has a place to bring 
arrestees.

Fewer than 10 have been picked up inside the city limits. The vast majority 
were apprehended in neighboring Jefferson Parish, where flooding was less 
severe, giving police more opportunities to pursue looting suspects.

The jail is being run largely by prison guards brought from the 
maximum-security Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

When they entered the building late last week to begin construction, they 
chased off people inside the gift shop, said Burl Cain, the Angola warden 
who is in charge here.

The terminal is located in Union Station, which also houses the Amtrak 
depot. The clocks, which had stopped, began ticking again when generators 
were installed.

A few longtime Angola inmates trained as welders helped put up the fencing. 
In the corner of each holding cell is a portable toilet ­ with no door.

A German shepherd attack dog also made the trip from Angola. Armed guards 
stand at the entrance to the terminal.

There is room here for 700 suspects, about 45 to a cage.

"We call it Camp Greyhound," said Cain, who wore a T-shirt reading, 
"Angola: A gated community."

All bus station inmates will be given crew cuts upon arrival, he said.

Nobody was brought here for stealing to survive, he said.

"One guy came in here and said, 'I was stealing water,'" Cain said. To 
which the warden replied, "Well, why do you have all that beer and wine?"

Another suspect was arrested for attempted rape, he said.

Tabitha Shantell, picked up on suspicion of looting in Jefferson Parish, 
said she and a friend were arrested Saturday afternoon outside a ransacked 
wireless phone store. She said she was there to return a number of items 
that a friend's son had stolen.

"I was going to throw them in the door," she said.

Prosecutions will be far from routine.

"Most of our D.A.s have lost their homes and are scattered around the 
country," said Kellie Rish, an assistant state district attorney in New 
Orleans.

Grand jury members must be located to issue charges in the most serious cases.

Under normal circumstances, charges must be brought within 60 days. The 
state government may suspend that rule and extend the deadlines, said 
Melanie Talia, who also works for the state district attorney in New Orleans.

Her office claimed two rooms ­ one for evidence and one for workspace ­ in 
the upstairs of the depot.

Court appearances may be conducted via videoconferencing, Cain said.

Cases involving federal crimes will be handled by the U.S. District 
Attorney's Office, which now has a branch office on the ground floor of the 
bus station.

The suspect facing the most-serious charges so far is Bailey, 20, who has 
been isolated in cage 6. He was arrested early Monday by federal ATF agents 
investigating reports of nightly shooting in a neighborhood in the Algiers 
section of the city.

According to a criminal complaint, the agents saw him fire at a helicopter 
from an apartment window and then heard him say, "They won't be back now."

The agents reported that they found a .22-caliber revolver, a .32-caliber 
revolver and a box of 9-millimeter ammunition under a mattress in the 
apartment.

Bailey, shirtless with a cross hanging on a long chain around his neck, 
faces federal charges of being a felon in possession of firearms and of 
attempting to destroy an aircraft with those weapons.

Claiming that he was targeted because of a prior conviction for illegal 
possession of a gun, Bailey said he was innocent. He said he was asleep 
when he heard a loud voice calling, "Come out of the house."

He will be sent to Baton Rouge for arraignment, a federal justice official 
said.

Most suspects do not stay here long.

By late Tuesday afternoon, the cells were nearly empty again.

All but a few of the inmates had been loaded onto three buses headed for 
the Elaine Hunt Correctional Center about 60 miles away in the town of St. 
Gabriel.

 From there, they will be dispersed to prisons around the state while they 
await the filing of formal charges.

Those suspects are not the only ones waiting for justice.

A quarter of the records were recovered from the New Orleans jail during 
last week's evacuation of about 6,000 inmates.

Inevitably, some of the prisoners were being held on misdemeanor charges. 
But without records, Cain said, there was no way to know for sure.

The prisoners were dispersed to various state penitentiaries, including Angola.

"I had one guy tell me that he was in there for speeding," Cain said.

When another claimed his crime was not paying child support, Cain said, "We 
laughed and loaded him up too."




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