Ellington

It began, as it always does, with beer. It was my first trip to New Orleans, in October 2004, to see Voodoo Fest with my girlfriend Melissa. We had checked into our hotel and caught a cab to City Park, tickled by the novelty of legally drinking beer in a moving vehicle. But as we walked into the festival, those two beers and hours on the road caught up with me. I needed immediate bladder relief.

Two hundred yards into the park, we came to a porta-pottie—one porta-pottie with a line 25 people long. Fortunately, this was a park, and there were heavy bushes not far from the porta-pottie. I have no problem urinating amid nature's grandeur, but I'm not an exhibitionist. I looked around carefully to be sure I was unobserved and got down to business.

As I finished, a New Orleans police cruiser slid to a stop on the other side of the bushes, gravel flying from the wheels. Two officers, a short black woman and a white man with sunglasses and a buzz cut, jumped out and ran around the bushes. In seconds, they had clamped the cuffs down so hard on my wrists that they held the mark for hours. You can't take any risks with a pee terrorist.

Buzz-cut studied my Wisconsin driver's license. "You pee outside in Wisconsin, boy?"

"Yes sir," I answered.

"Then you're stupid everywhere."

They pulled me over to the cruiser, and that's when I realized I had been caught by a pee sting. A group of officers was standing about 200 yards away from the lone porta-pottie, observing it with binoculars, waiting for desperation to lure tourists over to the bushes.

As they shoved me down into the cruiser, with Sonic Youth's "Daydream Nation" booming across the park, Melissa ran up to the car. "What did he do?" she asked. "Where are you taking him?"

"Step away from the car, ma'am," the black woman said.

Melissa asked again and was ignored, so adopting her thickest Mississippi accent, she said, "I guess this is why New Orleans cops have the reputation they do."

That was all it took. Buzz-cut hopped out of the car and cuffed her, too. She was charged with public intoxication, though they never tested her, and resisting arrest, though she held her wrists out for the cuffs.

They took us to the dilapidated, filthy Orleans Parish Prison, the envy of Guatemalan jailers. The benches in the holding cells were crowded with African American men in tattered clothing. The walls were smeared with blood and filth. When a jailer in a stiff brown uniform passed, I asked how I could post bail. He yelled at me to keep my mouth shut.

There were men foaming at the mouth, going through withdrawal, laying on the floor. I had a yellow bracelet, while other men had orange or red. An old man who seemed to go to jail a lot told me that the yellow band was the best kind. One man in an orange prison jumper kept lifting up his pant leg to look at a huge roll of gauze on his thigh seeping through with blood. He had been shot through the leg, and he was wearing a red bracelet.

"You gonna be outta here in no time," the men reassured me with a hint of envy.

Hours passed. Sometimes the jailers would herd us together into a new cell so they could hose out the old one for new arrivals. When the jailers ignored our pleas for a man convulsing on the floor, one of the older prisoners remarked, "They can do what they want to an old man like me, but the youngsters, they hit 'em with a fitty caliber."

Eventually, I learned that my bail was $800, though no one explained how I could pay it. I kept waiting for the moment when an officer would sit me down at a desk and say: "Here are the charges, and here are your options. You can either post bail, hire a bail bondsman or spend the night in jail. Which will it be?" That moment never came.

At midnight, the jailer in charge unlocked our door and herded us over toward property holding. Men began to hand over their wallets and other valuables. I realized with dread that they were going to send us to jail. They started to issue plastic bags for street clothes along with the orange pajamas printed OPP.

My name was called. I went to the desk. There was a middle-aged African American woman, her hair tightly braided.

"How do I post bail?" I asked softly. "I have money. I can pay my bond with this."

I held out a credit card. She gave a nervous glance to the head jailer and told me they didn't take cards. I could call a bondsman who might. With her permission, I hurried over to a phone and was told that as long as my card cleared, I'd be out in 45 minutes. When the head jailer heard I'd posted bond, he yelled at the woman who had helped me because, he said, my form was already in back. He showed me a plastic bag with my name on it and shook his head. I was released two hours later, at 2 a.m.

When I stepped outside, I was so full of joy that I gave a friendly crackhead $10—obviously, my karma needed work. Melissa's mother had already wired money for her release, but the jailers said it had not come. I asked them what would happen if it came through after I paid, and they assured me that the system would automatically reject two payments. I posted her bail, and they kept the extra $615 from Melissa's mother for more than a month.

Melissa had already been put in orange and transferred to the jail, but they kept her another four hours after she was back in her clothes. She was released at 6 a.m.

Two days later, we went before a judge. I pled no contest, but when Melissa tried to do the same, the judge refused her plea. He could not believe that this pretty girl from Mississippi had resisted arrest, so he made her plead innocent. Altogether, the adventure cost us $600.

As we sat in court, hundreds of black men were sentenced to months in jail for petty offenses. Hundreds of New Orleans officers abandoned their posts after Katrina, and others were arrested for looting. Thousands of men and women were abandoned in the OPP during the storm, left locked in cells with water up to their chests for days. Every year, officers are indicted for police brutality, corruption or even murder, and the FBI never seems done investigating the NOPD.

If you're headed to Voodoo Fest this weekend, by all means, have a good time, but take this friendly word of advice. Whatever you do, don't pee on a bush.

Previous Comments

ID

73913

Comment

Early edition of the Editor's Note. I didn't have much space to talk about what happened during Katrina, so here's a link that details how prisoners including men, women and children were abandoned in the OPP: http://www.aclu.org/prison/conditions/26421prs20060810.html I'd also like to open this thread up for people to post their own NOPD stories. I've learned that almost everyone has one.

Author

Brian C Johnson

Date

2006-10-25T13:13:15-06:00

ID

73914

Comment

Here are some excerpts ... The ACLU report describes a history of neglect at Orleans Parish Prison, one of the most dangerous and mismanaged jails in the country. This culture of neglect was evident in the days before Katrina, when the sheriff declared that the prisoners would remain "where they belong," despite the mayor's decision to declare the city's first-ever mandatory evacuation. OPP even accepted prisoners, including juveniles as young as 10, from other facilities to ride out the storm. As floodwaters rose in the OPP buildings, power was lost, and entire buildings were plunged into darkness. Deputies left their posts wholesale, leaving behind prisoners in locked cells, some standing in sewage-tainted water up to their chests. ... Ivy Gisclair, who was being held at OPP for $700 in traffic violations (mostly parking tickets) and had never been in any serious trouble with the law. After days in OPP following the storm, Ivy was transferred to Hunt, where he witnessed stabbings, rapes and countless fights. Ivy was finally transferred to Bossier Parish Maximum Security Prison. His release date came and went. When he asked a guard about it, he was pepper sprayed, repeatedly shocked with a Taser, beaten by multiple guards, and put in solitary confinement with no clothes. Ivy was released in an orange prison jumpsuit at a gas station by the side of the road, three weeks after his scheduled release date. It was the day of Hurricane Rita.

Author

Brian C Johnson

Date

2006-10-25T13:17:10-06:00

ID

73915

Comment

One thing about NOPD and the jail: Not one bit of racism occurs there. They treat everyone like crap.

Author

Kingfish

Date

2006-10-25T13:48:24-06:00

ID

73916

Comment

Municipal and justice courts make tons of money off poor and often innocent people because they don't know how to fight the system and don't have lawyer friends to help them do it. It's literally barbaric what happens to many of these people in these courts. When I was self employed I used to help some people with these cases free of charge. I especially despise many of the police officers, prosecutors and judges at this level. They get away with major injustice in some jurisdictions. Some are very good and decent though. Should I ever reach the point where I totally don't give sh1t any more, the small courts are where I plan to do some of my best cursing. I was just joking in case any bar officials or judges see this. Brian you haven't lived until you've done some time. You're a big boy now. A little while longer and you would have had to join a gang for protection. Sorry to hear about the distress of your girlfriend, too. Did she leave you after this?

Author

Ray Carter

Date

2006-10-25T17:36:55-06:00

ID

73917

Comment

The prison sounds like the inside of a slave ship. The only difference is that the prison has toilets. This quote from the ACLU article is disturbing: "The sheriff's office was completely unprepared for the storm," said Tom Jawetz, Litigation Fellow for the National Prison Project. "The Louisiana Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals did more for its 263 stray pets than the sheriff did for the more than 6,500 men, women and children left in his care." When an organization for animals is beter equipped than a prison for humans, something is wrong somewhere. Brian, I'm sorry to hear that happened to you and your friend. It is a good thing to share your story so folks can know what's going on down there.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2006-10-25T18:46:19-06:00

ID

73918

Comment

Perhaps, King, but the experience was profoundly disturbing with regard to race. The only thing I suffered was inconvenience, and as an articulate white male with a credit card, I was sure to get out soon. I was, however, the ONLY white man in my holding cell. Everyone else was African American, and most of them appeared to be very poor. As we were leaving court a couple of days later, we ran into a cheerful crack head who had just been released from the OPP. He told us that they had released him because he told the police he had swallowed a rock of crack when they arrested him. Procedures require the police to take him to the hospital and post a guard to be sure that he didn't overdose and die in state custody. If he dies on the street, however, that's somebody else's problem, so they simply let him go. Fortunately, he was lying about the rock.

Author

Brian C Johnson

Date

2006-10-27T11:34:10-06:00

ID

73919

Comment

blame Eddie Jordan for alot of it Bryan. Judges have started to throw out his cases because of his severe procrastination on prosecutions. In case you haven't noticed, they are having a severe crime problem in NO right now. The gangs are returning and re-establishing turf. There are numerous stories on this. I'm not surprised you were the only white guy in there. Right now crime is as high as it was before Katrina with half the population and 3/4 of the police officers and the national guard helping out. See what has been going on in Houston the last year and all of those elements are moving back. And the NOPD is horrible. Remember, this is the same bunch that looted NO last year and then were given a slap on the wrist. The whole ccriminal justice system there is completely broken.

Author

Kingfish

Date

2006-10-27T12:10:23-06:00

ID

73920

Comment

Can't figure out why people love the place.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2006-11-09T22:00:41-06:00

ID

73921

Comment

Because it's lovable, and mysterious, and crazy, and unique ...

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2006-11-09T22:01:33-06:00

ID

73922

Comment

That's tourism talking. In reality, it's poorer than we are and the police and justice system would make Soviet Russia look efficent.

Author

Ironghost

Date

2006-11-09T22:16:32-06:00

ID

73923

Comment

am sitting here recovering from a dinner at Ginos listetning to Beethoven's 3rd concerto. What kind of mischief have you people been up to on this board tonight?

Author

Kingfish

Date

2006-11-09T22:52:34-06:00