Reply #5: TREATED LIKE TRASH! [View All]

Treated Like Trash: New Katrina Report Reveals ‘Dickensian’ Abuse of Incarcerated Youth
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b919b57ff4ff3585e419967986224e37

New America Media, News Report, Cheryl Brown and Donal Brown, Posted: May 09, 2006

Editor’s Note: A damning new report details the ordeal of incarcerated youth during Hurricane Katrina, including being shackled and left in the rising waters in their cells. This story is a joint project reported and written by Donal Brown, reporter for the New America Media and Cheryl Brown, editor and co-owner of the Black Voice News serving Riverside and San Bernardino, California.

SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. -- Imagine you are a 14-year-old boy incarcerated for a minor offense and a category five hurricane is bearing down on the city. You are told nothing but then the lights go out, they come on for a short time, but go off again for good. The water is rising up to your legs then to your thighs.

A day passes and you are given no food and water.

“The water was past our hips. Beaucoup feces was everywhere, and we hoped the water wouldn’t go over our heads.” So begins the story of Eddie, an African-American child who said he will never be able to get out of his mind what happened during Katrina.

In a telephone interview on May 8, Eddie Fenceroy, now 15, told of his experience in the South White Detention Center at the Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) during Hurricane Katrina.

When Eddie was finally evacuated to some fish farm ponds at the OPP, he was "shackled at the ankles in a coffle and handcuffed," in the style trains of slaves were handled in the old South.

“The grown people were not shackled; it was like they thought we were much faster and could run away. Where would we have run? I was hoping to live and not die,” he said.

Eddie said he was starving and not allowed to eat the food that floated past on the flood waters, not even wrapped loaves of bread. He had to watch as the guards fed their own children. Then the guards deserted with their families. They left one person to guard, and he had an assault rifle trained on the juvenile inmates.

Eddie was finally taken to the Broad Street Bridge where he saw a lot of dead bodies floating in the water. He still has nightmares about the bodies and is plagued with foot fungus contracted during three days standing in the polluted waters.


http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b919b57ff4ff3585e419967986224e37