Sheriff Marlin Gusman couldn't have been paying attention if inmates were getting high (New Orleans)
Source: Times - Picayune
Ignore the evidence to the contrary. Orleans Parish Prison is run fabulously well. Sheriff Marlin Gusman makes sure it is. I sat in the sheriff's office for hours in September 2011 as he repeatedly made a point of his staff's vaunted vigilance. No prisoner escapes detection, he said. His staff always knows where its inmates are.
We were talking about rape and why Gusman was convinced folks claiming to have been sexually assaulted in his prison were liars. The sheriff gave multiple reasons for his skepticism, but in the end, there was this: How could there be such mayhem when his staff was keeping close watch?
I wasn't as persuaded as I was worn down. There seemed to be a preponderance of evidence suggesting the jail was poorly run, but the sheriff wasn't moved to contrition by any of it. But Gusman's practice of blithely dismissing criticism has to end now that we've seen video of inmates shooting up heroin, throwing back Budweisers, brandishing a hand gun and snorting cocaine off the cover of a Bible-themed word-search book. You think that book includes the phrase "high places?"
The video of prisoners drinking and getting high was one of three shown in federal court Tuesday regarding conditions at Orleans Parish Prison. U.S. District Judge Lance Africk could decide to make the city of New Orleans pay the millions of dollars it's projected to take to bring the prison up to constitutional standards. Or the judge could decide that jail conditions are so bad that control needs to be taken away from Gusman altogether. In calling for a federal receiver, Mayor Mitch Landrieu seems to be favoring Gusman's removal. The mayor has insisted that the city can't afford to pay out of the nose to fix the Police Department and out of the nose to fix the parish prison.
Read more: http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2013/04/post_165.html
If no one has been keep track of this, this is probably the worst run jail in the country. It makes "Sheriff Joe" look like a liberal.
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