[Mb-civic] Abuse, Forced Labor Rampant in New Orleans Justice System

[Mha Atma Khalsa]

http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2475

Abuse, Forced Labor Rampant in New Orleans Justice
System

by Jessica Azulay 

The videotaped beating of a New Orleans resident
offers but a small sample of the widespread brutality,
deprivation and railroading that have come to
characterize the city’s response to alleged
crimes.

New Orleans, Oct 12 - When Robert Davis emerged from
the temporary detention center in New Orleans, his eye
was swollen nearly shut, his face was bruised, and he
had a couple of stitches under his left eye. He told
The NewStandard that police had beaten him and then
charged him with public intoxication and battery, even
though he had not had a drink in 25 years and had
merely asked a police officer to leave him alone.

The 64-year-old retired elementary school teacher sat
sadly in a chair Sunday morning outside the makeshift
jail and struggled to read the ticket he had been
issued, a carbon copy stub, much of it illegible.
Perhaps most alarming to Davis at the time was that on
the line for the arresting officer's name –
probably one of the men who had beaten him –
there was only an "X."

"He didn't even have his name on there," Davis
remarked. "I don't even know who he is."

What Davis also did not know was that an Associated
Press cameraman had caught the beating on video, and
the officers responsible now face charges. On the
tape, which has since made national headlines, white
police officers pummel Davis – who is black
– with their fists before brutally tackling him
to the ground while the bewildered retiree shows no
signs of resistance.

But what did not make it into the tape or national
attention was that Davis is just one of more than
nearly a thousand people who have suffered in a
horrific place the police call "Camp Amtrak," an
improvised jail in what used to be the New Orleans bus
terminal.


[PHOTO: Retired school teacher Robert Davis shows his
wounds minutes after his release from Camp Amtrak.
Though the story of his beating and arrest at the
hands of New Orleans police are national news, the
rest of his ordeal -- and that of nearly a thousand
others -- exposes a far bigger, more systemic crisis.]

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans
authorities are arresting hundreds on minor charges
such as breaking curfew or public intoxication,
housing them in brutal conditions and then pushing
them through a court process that forces most into
working on clean-up projects at police facilities,
according to numerous interviews and documents
obtained by TNS.

At the converted Greyhound terminal, which now serves
as a different kind of way station, no passengers
arrive with luggage. Instead, police bring people in
and book them at what used to be a ticket counter. In
the back, where travelers used to board buses, police
now push detainees into wire pens where they sleep on
the concrete in the open air.

In interviews both inside and outside of Camp Amtrak,
people who had been through the process told harrowing
accounts of police brutality and harsh conditions.
Some of them, like Davis, had visible injuries. Many
said police had attacked them or others in their cells
with pepper spray. All recounted trying to sleep on
the concrete floor of the bus parking lot with just
one blanket – or in some cases no blanket –
to protect them from the cold and the mosquitoes which
swoop in on randomly alternating nights here. None was
given a phone call or access to an attorney.

"They treat us like shit," said one inmate through the
wire cage. Others chimed in. One said he had not been
given a blanket the night before because there were
not enough to go around. Many worried that their
family members did not know where they were because
they had not been allowed to contact them.


[PHOTO: Inmates held at Camp Amtrak are given only a
blanket to protect them from the cold and mosquitoes
that arrive with the New Orleans night. Jailers keep
them in chain-link pens and refuse them access to
legal representation and any contact with the outside
world.]

Michael Resovsky was one of several men outside the
jail yesterday waiting to be picked up for a shift of
what the sheriff's department calls "community
service." He recalled the night he spent inside: "They
threw you a blanket and they gave you those MREs
– you know, those meals in a bag – and they
take the heater part out of it and the little bottle
of hot sauce so you have to eat it cold. And you sleep
on the concrete with a blanket, and the smell is not
too nice.

"They were coming in there and macing people, and
people were hollering and I couldn't get no sleep, and
you know, it was pretty bad," said Resovsky, who is
white.

Anthony Jack, another former detainee, added: "It was
cold [inside]; I couldn't sleep." Jack, a black
immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, said police had
arrested him on his own property and charged him with
violating curfew, which in most neighborhoods here is
still in affect from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

"I was in my yard, and a young white guy came by the
gate and I was talking to him and the police came and
arrested both of us," he recounted. "He was outside
breaking curfew; I was inside… behind the gate.
The police broke my gate down with a pick-ax. They
broke it completely off the fence."

Jack continued: "It makes me really angry, man. It
made me realize that the law isn't working the way it
is supposed to."

Sandy Freelander, a relief volunteer from Wisconsin,
was also one of the hundreds arrested. He said that he
and two friends – one a New Orleanian widely
known here for having helped rescue hundreds of people
in the Seventh Ward during the flooding – were
detained by police in a parking lot last Thursday. He
said that they were on their knees with their hands
behind their heads when a police officer attacked his
friend.


[PHOTO: The lobby of the New Orleans Greyhound bus
depot has been converted into a makeshift booking
center run by members of the New York City police
department. Arrestees are processed here before being
thrown into pens constructed in the Bus parking area,
before ultimately taken upstairs to "court" where most
are offered a choice between forced labor and
continued incarceration.]

"This middle-aged white [police officer] got real
excited about kicking Reggae, Freelander said. "He
came running across the parking lot and kicked
[Reggae] in the hip while [Reggae] was down on his
knees with his hands behind his head. [The officer]
pushed [Reggae] on the ground and put his foot to the
back of his neck and pointed his gun at him and said
he was going to blow his fucking brains out if he
moved again. This guy was really excited about beating
up the first black guy he saw or something."

Even though Freelander said the three had permission
from the owner to be in the parking lot, the police
arrested them on charges of criminal trespassing.

Inside, Freelander said his friend was denied medical
attention and that they witnessed police
pepper-spraying other detainees police handcuffing a
woman to a pole and leaving here for hours and other
abuse. He, like all others interviewed by TNS said he
was not permitted a phone call or legal counsel, even
after repeated requests.

Major Troy Poret, part of a team that runs Camp
Amtrak, was unapologetic about the treatment of
inmates there. He stressed that the police have been
working under extraordinary conditions since Hurricane
Katrina and that many of the prisoners were from out
of state.

"These poor police officers are stretched out as far
as they can be and yet you've got to mess with a bunch
of gourd heads like we have down here and we have to
make a jail for these kind of people," he said.
"That's what's really bad about this whole
[situation]."

Poret, like many of the people working at Camp Amtrak,
used to work at Louisiana State Penitentiary at
Angola, a notorious jail among prisoners' rights
activists for its cruel conditions.

Asked whether police were pepper-spraying prisoners,
Poret was again unapologetic. "I have randomly had to
use it," he said. "We have to use it if they are
endangering other people in the pen or endangering
their [own] lives.

"Look up at the setup that we have," he said. "It's an
old bus terminal. It's keeping the bad guys off the
streets from harassing the poor people of the New
Orleans district from worrying about their houses
being broken into or worrying about some drunk laying
on their porch…"

When asked why police were denying detainees phone
calls, Poret said the station did not have any phones
for them to use.

"I have a fax phone and I have one local line [here]
and that's it," he said, "I have a cell phone, but I
can't afford a cell phone bill for a thousand people."

But Freelander stressed how important access to the
outside world was during incarceration. "The phone
call was the biggest thing," he said. "I mean, how are
you supposed to even find out what your options are
talking to a lawyer? They're steamrolling the whole
process without giving you any legal representation."

Freelander, Resovsky and Jack all said that in the
mornings after their arrest, they were taken to a
courtroom upstairs where most prisoners were pressured
into pleading guilty and accepting between 40 and 80
hours of unpaid labor.

A visit to the courtroom yesterday confirmed their
accounts. In a stark, second-floor room of the
Greyhound station, police brought in about 20 inmates
who had spent the night in the cages. When they
entered the room, public defender Clyde Merritt
briefly explained the options while the defendants
strained to hear him. In most cases, he told them,
they could plead guilty and they would be sentenced to
about 40 hours of "community service." If they wished
the maintain their innocence, he said, they would be
sent to Hunts Correctional Facility where they could
wait as long as 21 days to be processed, no matter how
minor or unsupported their charges.

Many of the defendants were obviously confused. They
swarmed him with questions, but he held them off,
telling them that he could not give them individual
advice. For that, he said, they would have to retain
their own attorneys.

Off to the side, the lone female defendant stood shyly
in her pajamas and flip-flops. She later told the
judge she had been arrested right in front of her
house.

In the end, given the choice between unpaid work and
continued incarceration, nearly all chose to plead
guilty.

According to documents obtained by The NewStandard,
most who pass through Camp Amtrak are brought in on
charges of possession of stolen property, looting or
violating curfew. But the vast majority of those
interviewed or observed in court this week were
arrested for alleged curfew violations or public
intoxication.


[PHOTO: According to documents obtained by The
NewStandard, nearly 1,000 individuals have been held
at Camp Amtrak since it was established in the wake of
Hurricane Katrina.]

"The situation down there is really bad," said Don
Antenen, a prisoner support activist from Cincinnati,
Ohio who has been monitoring Camp Amtrak and working
to secure legal support for people whose rights have
been violated. "It's not isolated from the rest of the
prison system in the United States," Antenen said,
"but we're seeing all of the worst elements of the
United States prison system coming all to the
forefront and being very concentrated in one
location."

He continued: "The police are basically arresting
people for curfew violations and public intoxication
and just using it as a way to get free labor to clean
up the prisons and court houses and the police
stations. They're just using it as a way to get people
to do their dirty work for free."

Brandon Toussaint, a black 18-year-old who spoke to
TNS as he was waiting to be picked up and taken to
perform a day of punishment, said he was arrested
going from the downstairs of is apartment complex to
another apartment upstairs. Police charged him with
violating curfew and public intoxication, and
Toussaint accepted forced labor rather than a transfer
to Hunts, even though he said he had been wrongly
arrested. He said he was worried that he would now
have a criminal record, this being his first
"offense."

Toussaint said he had already done a few days of work
for the police, cleaning up and painting their
facilities.

"If they needed someone to clean up their city, they
could have just asked," he said.

All of the interviews quoted and conditions described
by the journalist are fully documented on audio and/or
videotape. Documents used were provided by Camp Amtrak
officials.

The NewStandard will be running stories from
correspondent Jessica Azulay in New Orleans for at
least the next two weeks, as well as weblog entries
provding more background about gathering this story
and eyewitness testimony from sources.

© 2005 The NewStandard. See our reprint policy.





	
		
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