Exerpt of a blog post about a reported prison riot and armed urban conflict in the immediate aftermath of Katrina in New Orleans.
Ned Sublette says: "i can confirm from another source that the orleans parish prison riot really happened, though it hasn't been in the media much, if at all. by the way, the AK-47 is known in new orleans as a "chopper" or a "chop." as in b.g.'s "chopper city in the ghetto" (1998), a platinum-selling album on cash money which gave the world the phrase "bling bling."
We got a call from Baton Rouge on Sunday to be ready to be activated. We shipped out Tuesday morning. We (about 600 Probation and Parole Officers from all over the state) had to empty the Orleans Parish Prison which had 4,000 prisoners and transport them to state facilities in other parts of the state. They were rioting, killing each other and holding civilian hostages.
This never made the news, at least not to the extent that actually played out. We had to have our State CERT teams go in there and use lethal force. I still don't have the exact count of how many had to be shot. I saw the body of one after having been shot and having fallen from the window they had broken through to escape.
Nearby I saw the body of another guy who appeared to have been robbed and killed, then thrown off the expressway that all the refugees were using to get around above the flooded street. There were bodies everywhere. Dogs were dying all over from drinking the water that was flooding the area. We were stationed on the expressway right opposite the Super Dome, about six hundred yards away.
Update: Ned Sublette forwards along this correction request from Elijah Wald:
All 7,100 inmates who had been trapped in the Orleans Parish Prison, which is perhaps the nation's largest jail, were evacuated safely by Friday, state officials said. Deputies, other jail staff, and their families were taken to a shelter in Houma. Despite reports to the contrary, state and local corrections officials said there were no acts of violence during the jail evacuation and that not a single inmate escaped. Link to related New Orleans Times-Picayune story.
