TX Civil Rights Project Publishes Jail Stories from Hurricane Ike

On the anniversary of Hurricane Ike, the Texas Civil Rights Project yesterday released this 34-page report (pdf) on the staff and more than 1,000 inmates who remained in the Galveston County Jail throughout the storm despite a mandatory evacuation order. Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Despite a mandatory evacuation order for Galveston County, and despite the evacuation of all state prison facilities in the path of Ike, now-former Sheriff Gean Leonard failed to evacuate over one thousand men and women in custody at the jail. “The animal shelter down the street was evacuated, but they didn’t evacuate people at the jail,” said Leonard Rodriguez, who was incarcerated at the jail during the hurricane. “They knew it was going to be bad. The guards told us they were talking about writing our social security numbers and birth dates on our arms in permanent marker so that our bodies could be identified if the jail flooded and we drowned,” Rodriguez said.

“The Sheriff’s decision not to evacuate the jail was made without any regard for the conditions that the inmates would be forced to endure after the storm hit,” Lauren Izzo, TCRP prisoner’s rights attorney said. These people for weeks faced filthy, flooded, unsanitary conditions, lack of water, inadequate food, an inability to communicate with loved ones, and a lack of adequate medical treatment.

The stories told by the men and women who were at the jail reveal a shocking disregard for their basic human rights. “There was no water, and the toilets were overflowing onto the floors. We were given buckets to use as toilets and we only had one five gallon container of drinking water to share between 48 people,” said Ray Lazare, who was at the jail during the hurricane. “I saw one guy in my unit get dizzy and slip on the wet floor. He hit his head hard on a bed frame and lost consciousness. It took a long time for the guards to revive him, and all they did was give him a Band-Aid for the gash on his head and a peanut butter sandwich,” said Michael Shane Smith, also at the jail during the storm.

Denise Forteson was three and a half months pregnant when she was at the jail during the storm. Due to the lack of water, Forteson became severely dehydrated and when she developed a urinary tract infection, she couldn’t take antibiotics because they dehydrated her further. “I really thought that I was going to die,” said Forteson. “We all kept thinking about what happened to the prisoners in Orleans Parish Prison during Hurricane Katrina.”

“The county declared a mandatory evacuation, but didn’t even evacuate the one group of people actually in county custody,” said Izzo. “Now that hurricane season is once again upon us, it is imperative to ensure that this sort of human rights violation does not happen again.”

Bottom line, this was an incredibly dumb decision and both the Sheriff and those he left behind got lucky. If the Hurricane had hit the island with full force as predicted before the storm (instead it hit just a shade north), it would have utterly flooded the jail site. What's more, even having survived the storm, the Sheriff's department was needed for other purposes in the storm's aftermath but instead found themselves distracted and unprepared to care for 1,000 prisoners in a disaster zone.

I may post again on this topic once I have a chance to read the whole thing. For now, see coverage of the TCRP report from the Galveston County News and some contemporary Grits coverage:

• Hubris: Galveston Sheriff leaves inmates, deputies in Hurricane's path
• Waiting for word on 1,000 prisoners stranded at Galveston jail
• Galveston jail unprepared for Ike aftermath

UPDATE: See the Houston Chronicle's coverage of the TCRP report. MORE: From Facing South.