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>>>*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.<<<*

 

New Orleans beating incident only one example of abuse and forced labor

since Katrina

 

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

 

*by* blksista <http://www.boomantribune.com/user/blksista>

*Wed Oct 12th, 2005 at 09:11:34 PM EDT*

Via Raw Story and the

NewStandard<http://newstandardnews.net/content/index.cfm/items/2475>.

 

 

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.*

 

[...]

 

*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.*

 

Is that really why Greyhound no longer goes to New Orleans?

 

Reporter Jessica Azulay (who is conducting several reports in the coming

weeks about the aftermath of Katrina on New Orleans residents) continued:

 

*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.*

 

So when Davis was released from police custody, he was not leaving the

Orleans Parish Jail. He was leaving the coverted Greyhound Bus Terminal.

 

If it had not been the Associated Press there, there would not have been

this uproar. Davis would have been just another victim of police harassment.

 

 

I am sure that if they had been offered minimum wage, these people would

have worked, and gladly. But no, that is too good for them. Frankly, this

mirrors white coercion during World War I, when most of the able-bodied

white men from the South were at war and there were too few white men

available to work. The same thing happened during the Mississippi floods of

1927, when blacks were pressed against their will into doing levee work for

food.

 

Several witnesses spoke for the record, including the following:

 

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. "

 

Even an aid worker from Wisconsin, Sandy Freelander, was caught in the

police dragnet, along with two friends of his, one of whom had helped rescue

dozens of survivors in the Seventh Ward. New Orleans police had a field day

with the man who was called Reggae:

 

* " 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. " *

 

Freelander maintained that he and his friends had permission from the owner

to be in the parking lot. Nevertheless, the police arrested them on criminal

trespass charges.

 

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.

 

*Unfortunately, Major Tony Poret, who was unapologetic about the macing,

beatings and illegal detainings, and who helps run Camp Amtrak, is a former

prison official from the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, one of the

most notorious prisons in the United States*.

 

" 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]. "

 

*Gourd heads?*

 

" 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... "

 

Are these people really the bad guys? But here is the money shot:

 

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.

 

[...]

 

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.*

 

This has got to stop.

 

 

 

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