Were New Orleans Inmates Left to Drown?
Posted on Thu Sep 29, 2005 at 08:28:20 AM EST
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by TChris
Human Rights Watch reports that the sheriff's department in New Orleans left hundreds of inmates locked in a city jail as flood waters began to rise.
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.
More than 500 inmates are missing. Were any of them left to drown?
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. ... 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.
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.
A spokeswoman for the sheriff’s department insists that “nobody drowned, nobody was left behind.” A corrections officer, complaining of "complete chaos," told HRW: “Ain't no tellin’ what happened to those people.” As this editorial argues, whether any deaths occurred must be investigated.
Why did this happen?
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.
Even if no inmate died, the failure to have an evacuation plan in place was shockingly negligent. As the custodian of captive inmates, the sheriff's department had a constitutional obligation to protect them from harm. Their neglect of those in their care is an outrage that shouldn't be forgotten in the muddle of tragic stories that continue to come to light.
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