TCRP Human Rights Report 2009: Galveston County Fails to Evacuate Jail for Hurricane Ike

Press Release

The Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) announces the publication of its 2009 Human Rights Report, “Shelter from the Storm? Galveston County’s Refusal to Evacuate Detainees and Inmates at Its Jail during Hurricane Ike,” on the anniversary of the hurricane. This report is the first to contain the actual accounts from the people who lived through Ike and its aftermath at the jail.

Find the complete report here (in pdf format: 703kb).

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.”