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<h1><b>New Orleans: Prisoners Abandoned to Floodwaters<br><br>
<br>
</b></h1><h2><b>Officers Deserted a Jail Building, Leaving Inmates Locked
in Cells </b></h2><font face="helvetica" size=3>(New York, September 22,
2005)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. <br>
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. <br>
<br>
“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.” <br>
<br>
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. <br>
<br>
Carey spent five days in Louisiana, conducting dozens of interviews with
inmates evacuated from Orleans Parish Prison, correctional officers,
state officials, lawyers and their investigators who had interviewed more
than 1,000 inmates evacuated from the prison. <br>
<br>
The sheriff of Orleans Parish, Marlin N. Gusman, did not call for help in
evacuating the prison until midnight on Monday, August 29, a state
Department of Corrections and Public Safety spokeswoman told Human Rights
Watch. Other parish prisons, she said, had called for help on the
previous Saturday and Sunday. The evacuation of Orleans Parish Prison was
not completed until Friday, September 2. <br>
<br>
According to officers who worked at two of the jail buildings, Templeman
1 and 2, they began to evacuate prisoners from those buildings on
Tuesday, August 30, when the floodwaters reached chest level inside.
These prisoners were taken by boat to the Broad Street overpass bridge,
and ultimately transported to correctional facilities outside New
Orleans. <br>
<br>
But at Templeman III, which housed about 600 inmates, there was no prison
staff to help the prisoners. Inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch
varied about when they last remember seeing guards at the facility, but
they all insisted that there were no correctional officers in the
facility on Monday, August 29. A spokeswoman for the Orleans parish
sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch she did not know whether the
officers at Templeman III had left the building before the
evacuation. <br>
<br>
According to inmates interviewed by Human Rights Watch, they had no food
or water from the inmate’s last meal over the weekend of August 27-28
until they were evacuated on Thursday, September 1. By Monday, August 29,
the generators had died, leaving them without lights and sealed in
without air circulation. The toilets backed up, creating an unbearable
stench. <br>
<br>
“They left us to die there,” Dan Bright, an Orleans Parish Prison inmate
told Human Rights Watch at Rapides Parish Prison, where he was sent after
the evacuation. <br>
<br>
As the water began rising on the first floor, prisoners became anxious
and then desperate. Some of the inmates were able to force open their
cell doors, helped by inmates held in the common area. All of them,
however, remained trapped in the locked facility. <br>
<br>
“The water started rising, it was getting to here,” said Earrand Kelly,
an inmate from Templeman III, as he pointed at his neck. “We was calling
down to the guys in the cells under us, talking to them every couple of
minutes. They were crying, they were scared. The one that I was cool
with, he was saying ‘I'm scared. I feel like I'm about to drown.' He was
crying.” <br>
<br>
Some inmates from Templeman III have said they saw bodies floating in the
floodwaters as they were evacuated from the prison. A number of inmates
told Human Rights Watch that they were not able to get everyone out from
their cells. <br>
<br>
Inmates broke jail windows to let air in. They also set fire to blankets
and shirts and hung them out of the windows to let people know they were
still in the facility. Apparently at least a dozen inmates jumped out of
the windows. <br>
<br>
”We started to see people in T3 hangin' shirts on fire out the windows,”
Brooke Moss, an Orleans Parish Prison officer told Human Rights Watch.
“They were wavin' em. Then we saw them jumping out of the windows . . .
Later on, we saw a sign, I think somebody wrote `help' on it.”
<br>
<br>
As of yesterday, signs reading “Help Us,” and “One Man Down,” could still
be seen hanging from a window in the third floor of Templeman III.
<br>
<br>
Several corrections officers told Human Rights Watch there was no
evacuation plan for the prison, even though the facility had been
evacuated during floods in the 1990s. <br>
<br>
“It was complete chaos,” said a corrections officer with more than 30
years of service at Orleans Parish Prison. When asked what he thought
happened to the inmates in Templeman III, he shook his head and said:
“Ain't no tellin’ what happened to those people.” <br>
<br>
“At best, the inmates were left to fend for themselves,” said Carey. “At
worst, some may have died.” <br>
<br>
Human Rights Watch was not able to speak directly with Orleans Parish
Sheriff Marlin N. Gussman or the ranking official in charge of Templeman
III. A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department told Human Rights Watch
that search-and-rescue teams had gone to the prison and she insisted that
“nobody drowned, nobody was left behind.” <br>
<br>
Human Rights Watch compared an official list of all inmates held at
Orleans Parish Prison immediately prior to the hurricane with the most
recent list of the evacuated inmates compiled by the state Department of
Corrections and Public Safety (which was entitled, “All Offenders
Evacuated”). However, the list did not include 517 inmates from the jail,
including 130 from Templeman III. <br>
<br>
Many of the men held at jail had been arrested for offenses like criminal
trespass, public drunkenness or disorderly conduct. Many had not even
been brought before a judge and charged, much less been convicted.
<br><br>
<br>
<hr>
From:
<a href="http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/22/usdom11773.htm">
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/22/usdom11773.htm</a><br><br>
© Copyright 2003, Human Rights Watch 350 Fifth Avenue,
34th Floor New York, NY 10118-3299
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