by Doug Simpson, Associated Press
Oct. 6, 2005
A civil rights group
filed court papers
on Thursday
demanding access
to the New Orleans
city jail to
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investigate allegations that the lockup became chaotic after Hurricane Katrina, with inmates abandoned for days, without food or drinking water, with floodwaters up to their chests.
It took three days to evacuate over 6,000 inmates from the lockup after the storm hit on Aug. 29, prison authorities have said. The prisoners are now being held at 38 state and local lockups around Louisiana.
The American Civil Liberties Union's court filings demand information about where each prisoner is locked up. The group also wants the sheriff's office to halt any clean up at the jail because it could destroy evidence that prisoners were left standing in bacteria- and petroleum-laden floodwater.
A spokeswoman for Sheriff Marlin Gusman said in an e-mail that the sheriff had not yet been served with the papers.
Gusman has acknowledged previously that a loss of electricity plunged the jail into darkness, with no electricity or working toilets, creating an oppressive, foul-smelling atmosphere.
But he denied inmates' most shocking accusations: that corpses were floating through the facility and some prisoners went for days without food and water. He said prisoners, his staff and their families had food from the prison, plus MREs supplied by the military.
The ACLU was named counsel for all of the jail's inmates under a 1994 federal consent decree mandating heath and environmental standards.
In the court papers, the group includes the accounts of two inmates:
One said he was sprayed with mace and abandoned in a cell, with no lights, food, water or ventilation, for three days.
The other said he was evacuated from a flooded jail unit onto a basketball court with other prisoners, where they were left for several days without food, water, lights or ventilation.
The court papers also said many of Gusman's deputies left their posts, creating security risks: "The dwindling security staff, depleted by massive job walk-offs by deputies, was forced to maintain order and improvise an evacuation without sufficient manpower, weapons or vehicles."
Gusman has said "seven or eight" deputies, out of a total security staff of about 650, left their posts.
As originally published
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"And as the water began rising, [prisoners] were moved from that floor up to a higher floor, and ultimately they were placed by the guards in the gymnasium area in the facility, where they were locked in.
Once the guards placed them there, they did not see any guards again.
Some of the men that were on the same floor where they were, were not in this open gymnasium area, they were in holding cells.
And as the water began rising, it got higher and higher.
They had been there about a day-and-a-half with no food or water, and they had not seen any guards.
And the water rose until it reached chest level.
The men in the gymnasium were able to break the windows out of the gymnasium, and they literally swam out of that room to escape from the prison, but the men that were in the holding cells could not get out.
And the men that I spoke to that were able to free themselves were very, very certain that the other men in those holding cells have drowned."
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