Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Grits for Breakfast

Criminal Law

: Grits for Breakfast

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...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on September 15, 2009 (boomark / email).