FROM
NY Times
OPINION | September 29, 2005
Editorial
Trapped in a Flooding Jail Cell
The New Orleans police superintendent has been forced to resign because of
the department's horrific performance in the Katrina disaster. New Orleans
city officials should not stop there. They should also scrutinize
corrections officials and the officers who work for them. A harrowing report
from Human Rights Watch charges that corrections officers simply walked away
from a locked and flooding jail building that housed 600 inmates. The
prisoners were trapped and forgotten for as long as four days, the report
says, and dozens are said to be unaccounted for on an official evacuation
list.
Many of the inmates in the jail, the Orleans Parish lockup, were probably
being held for minor offenses like public drunkenness and criminal trespass.
Some jail buildings were evacuated in the early stages of the disaster. But
the inmates in another building say the guards who were supposed to shepherd
them out simply disappeared, leaving the cells and building doors locked. As
the water began rising, the prisoners on the ground level could be heard
calling for help. "We was calling down to the guys in the cells under us,"
one inmate is quoted as saying, "talking to them every few minutes. They
were crying; they were scared."
Those on the upper level broke windows and either leapt out or set fire to
pieces of clothing and held them outside the windows to signal to rescuers.
The prisoners inside spent days without power, food or water, standing in
sewage-tainted water up to their chests - or necks. The institution appears
to have had no evacuation plan, even though it had been emptied out in a
flood during the 90's. An official spokeswoman says that no lives were lost.
But inmates say they saw bodies floating in the water when they were finally
rescued. Asked about the prisoners missing from the evacuation lists, one
corrections officer said that there "ain't no telling" what happened to
them. Describing the event to investigators, one inmate said, "They left us
to die there."
These shocking charges should be thoroughly investigated - and not be lost
amid the other missteps and misdeeds that followed the hurricane.