Totally Bootleg: Cops and Jails in New Orleans : NOLA Indymedia

Until today, the New Orleans jail and courthouse were situated in a Greyhound bus station, the DA office was in a gift shop in the station lobby, and the cells were cages set up outside where the buses were once parked. According to police documents, over 1000 people were booked there following hurricane Katrina (1). Almost none got access to a phone call or lawyer (2) and many of those released told stories of abuse and neglect. This totally bootleg operation may have been disorganized - with every federal and local law enforcement agency you can think of running around (3), no clear leadership, and daily arrest numbers ranging from over 100 to less than 5 - but the goal is very clear: to re-establish the dominance of the State over an area that just recently was the site of widespread looting and government melt-down. Unsurprisingly, the New Orleans Police and their federal cohorts are using violence, intimidation, and misinformation to “take New Orleans back” (4). Within this context, I’ve been talking with prisoners released from the Greyhound jail complex and working with others who are documenting the conditions inside the Louisiana prison system.

Last week, I talked with a man who immigrated to New Orleans from Trinidad who was arrested for curfew violation despite being on his front yard behind a locked gate. Police hacked through the gate with an axe and arrested him anyway, along with another man who was on the street outside the building. This wasn’t his first time seeing cops at his home since the hurricanes. Weeks earlier, a man living in the same building had his door broken down by officers bearing rifles. The cops held a gun to the man’s head and beat him but left without making any arrests. These are not isolated incidents. On the contrary, this type of action has become normal police behavior.

The public beating of 64 year old Robert Davis (5) is not an isolated incident either. Talking with him after his release he described being hit from behind and then beaten on the ground after merely asking a cop what time the curfew started. His right eye was still swollen shut when I met him, and there were visible wounds on his face and chest. The images and video of Davis being beaten have been broadcasted across the world; with all of the media attention, the NOPD was quick to distance itself from the beating and call for internal investigations. What the news didn't report and the police won't distance themselves from are the dozens of similar incidents that have occured both on the street and inside the jail.

Throughout my interviews I've talked to many of the victims of this violence. One man was beaten, maced, and shot with bean-bag rounds while in custody for “talking too loud” (6). Another youth in Algiers was beaten on the street and arrested for allegedly stealing an ice chest, then released without seeing a judge. A lot of the people being brought in and attacked have no idea what they were charged with. A man I talked to yesterday described being beaten, dragged by his hair, and shot with bean bag rounds in the jail before he was even searched. The next morning, officers fired indiscriminately into the cage with bean bag rounds. The stories go on and on.

Of course, police violence and prison abuse didn't begin after Katrina and are not isolated to New Orleans. The NOPD has already killed 9 people this year, and other police departments around the country aren't far behind. From the beginning, poor and working class communities, particularly communities of color, have been under the heel of police repression, and with each year more people from these communities are sent to prison. Today, the United States has the largest prison population in the world (7).

I’m not writing this to rally support for the reform of the NOPD or any aspect of 'justice' system. I have no illusions about the police - they will act violently “outside the law” to regain control when they need to, and they’ll also “clean up their act” and go through the motions of suspending officers and feigning disgust when abuse is publicized. Democracy and fascism are different faces of the same system of domination. The question is, how long will this violence remain one-sided? Will the sporadic bursts of anti-police action explode into more generalized rioting? We have a long history of urban uprisings to learn from: the rebellion in Cincinnati, the Los Angeles riots, and the recent events in Toledo, just to name a few. The police provide the best arguments for their own destruction. We now know these arguments; let's draw conclusions!

1) According to police documents, 956 people had been booked at the Greyhound complex between 9/03/05 and 10/11/05. Today the warden stated that nearly 40 people have been booked every day since the 11th, so by the time the complex closed well over 1000 people had been detained there.

2) In the dozens of interviews we’ve conducted with released prisoners, not a single one has expressed that they’ve gotten access to a phone or lawyer. The warden of the jail has confirmed this in a taped interview.

3) Agencies that have arrested people include: NOPD, Jefferson Parish Police, DEA, ICE, National Guard, Plaquemines Parish Police, US Border Patrol, Kenner Police, DOC, Attorney General, ATF, LSP, US Marshall, St. Bernard Police, and Tulane Campus Police

4) “We’re taking New Orleans back” is loosely scrawled onto a piece of cardboard taped onto the door of the Greyhound jail complex.

5) See article ‘New Orleans Police Beating Caught on Tape’ by Mary Foster, AP

6) In several interviews, released prisoners have told me that inmates are being attacked by guards for “talking too loud.“ One man I talked to was beaten when he asked for medical help.

7) There are well over 2 million prisoners in local, State and Federal prisons and jails, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. China, with a population four times that of the USA, has over 1 million prisoners.