I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp

I don't know how many of you have been to the parts of New Orleans from which most of the "evacuees" are coming from, but the FEMA person was right:
"You don't know what kind of people are coming here".

I live in Louisiana, born in New Orleans.

There are parts of New Orleans, that if you are white, YOU DON"T GO THERE, even in daytime hours.

Understand, on a human level, my heart goes out. I have donated clothing, shoes, and my time to evacuees that are re-located to my area.

I am as wary of the Feds as anyone here, but they are right on this one. Contain and control. From your post, Val, you said if the evacuee leaves, they can't come back, so they CAN LEAVE.

Does anyone know what happened to the inmates in the New Orleans jails?
Has anyone screened the people coming to the camp for criminal records?

We have not seen the last of unrest associated with Katrina. I predict you will see more of it, only now it will be in the various relocation areas.

As I have said - some of these 'refugee's' will commit crimes, not all, just a small portion and its your governments duty to make sure it doesn't happen.

If the reverse were true and they just let them go as they please and such, the cry from the left would be just as bad.......why didn't the government check these people? Why did Bush let it happen?


A few weeks will not hurt them for the most part but it will give time to assess the situation and make plans accordingly.

remember some places that have taken them are already experiencing problems.

Excellent work Valhall, you get a WATS from me as well.

The more I read the more I find the situation smellier than downtown NO at the minute. Sure it's great all these people will have food in their bellies and roofs over their heads. As Barbara Bush had commented with a sly grin on her face during the week, a lot of them will be better off than they were before the hurricane hit.

However, I can't help but wonder about two things. Firstly, the topic of Emminent Domain. It's irritating enough that Halliburton are getting the rebuilding contracts, but think of the killing (no pun intended) that companies will make rezoning the poorer sections of the city, once they have been drained and bulldozed. You can also bet your bottom dollars that the storm protection will be built post-haste, so no problems getting insurance there.

The people who have been displaced, i.e. those who they couldn't exterminate through flooding, zero response, disease and criminal elements, will be relocated. The ones on social welfare may as well be elsewhere as anywhere. It just seems so smelly/convienient that all of a sudden prime NO real estate has been created and freed up.

The second issue is regarding disease. Putting people in close proximity in camps like that can only lead to more communication of disease. Is it by design? A few dysentry sufferers per camp, with kids being underfed and do we have a problem? Or does the problem "die out" away from the media glare? Will we remember those displaced 5 months from now?

As well as spreading disease, the issue of spreading civil unrest springs to mind. We have undesirable elements being exported to kind-hearted communties. It can only lead to resentment and more division. After a few months of putting up with robberies, rapes and murders after doing the Christian thing and bringing these people into your community, will you be as fast to do it again in the future? Think of how many people they can knock off next time around when the charity has dried up.

I am sure, however that we may be over-reacting and seeing conspiracies where there are none. It may be just what they say it is and things will return to normal in time. However, it doesn't hurt to shine a light on it and look at the situation from every angle.

Originally posted by texviator

Does anyone know what happened to the inmates in the New Orleans jails?
Has anyone screened the people coming to the camp for criminal records?

I've been asking the same question..twice in this thread..
You really have to wonder..I've only heard the vaguest mention of it on
Standard media..
So the question stands, what is the status of all the prisoners in the affected areas?
I'll see if I can find something..

In a way, this kinda reminds me of that TV show called The 4400 in which 4400 people show up out of nowhere. None of them have jobs or homes so the government takes them in.

Yes, all this sounds bad... But what else do you expect them to do?

Hopefully, if they do bulldoze the flooded area, they will have sense enough to create a park or some 'green space' that will absorb any flooding in the future....it would be cheap 'insurance' for a city below sea level, no?

As to 'screening' the people they are moving out to other communities, they have said that large numbers of these people have lost all records, all forms of ID......how will they know some one is who they say they are?? Might take a while to sort out at best. ( At least there should be a data base containing the finger prints of known criminals, even if all other ID has washed away.)

And the health concerns about quarantine may be the key......CNN is reporting there has been five deaths from a cholera-like illness.

Spacedoubt, I don't have a link, but I think I hear that the NO jail had to release their prisoners when it began to flood.

[edit on 6-9-2005 by frayed1]

This has some relevance to FEMA and how they are treating evacuees...

Evacuees not told where they're going

It wasn't confusion that prevented Hurricane Katrina evacuees from learning they were headed to Utah — it was intentional.

"I knew where Utah was, but nobody told me that's where we were going. Nothing personal. It's nice. But I don't know anybody here," said Jervis Bergeron, among the first batch of 152 evacuees to arrive at the National Guard's Camp Williams training site 30 miles south of Salt Lake City. The number rose to about 600 by late Sunday.

Like others who arrived in smaller military planes, Bergeron wasn't told where he was headed when he boarded the JetBlue airliner Saturday at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport.

National Guard officials asked a reporter and photographer aboard two separate military planes not to identify their news organizations or tell the refugees where the planes were going.

FEMA provides the rationale that when some people learn where they are going, they object and refuse to go... So now, using safety as a partial excuse, FEMA has decided they will make these decisions for them. Based on what is in this thread, these evacuees may have something to legitimately worry about....

One more thing....Are they really able to leave these shelters once they get there???? This article seems inconsistent with that. Why would it make sense to ship someone somewhere they don't what to go, only to allow them to immediately leave once they get there??

I smell a rat.


[edit on 6-9-2005 by loam]

okay then, lets not give them a place to live. Lets let them all roam the streets free, wherever they want to go. No money, no food. Some have a lost everything they have and feel that they've got nothing to lose.

The government is giving them a place to live and if they have somewhere else that they can go to they have the option to leave.

I don't see this as a prison. It's an attempt to keep these people in order because it could be much worse without it, for everyone.

Or am I missing the point?

Originally posted by Thatoneguy
okay then, lets not give them a place to live. Lets let them all roam the streets free, wherever they want to go. No money, no food. Some have a lost everything they have and feel that they've got nothing to lose.

The government is giving them a place to live and if they have somewhere else that they can go to they have the option to leave.

I don't see this as a prison. It's an attempt to keep these people in order because it could be much worse without it, for everyone.

Or am I missing the point?

It means freedom is illusory..... IMO, that is a far more scarier thought.

Originally posted by texviator
Does anyone know what happened to the inmates in the New Orleans jails?
Has anyone screened the people coming to the camp for criminal records?

The only tiny tidbit of information I can gather about the prisons is that on Thursday they were being bussed out:

The detainees were eventually driven away in trucks on Thursday with the help of prison officers brought in from other towns. But the New Orleans officers and their families were left behind, Mr Reyes said.

www.abc.net.au...

And a mention of a temporary jail being established by FEMA on Friday (Doubt this is where the prisoners went):

Temporary jail facility being established, need plastic handcuffs and shackles.

www.fema.gov...

Also found this:

About 3,000 inmates from Orleans Parish Prison were still in line to be moved as he spoke. And some female inmates were to be sent to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, an all-male prison, though corrections officials stressed the men and women would be kept separate.

www.wwltv.com...


There were a total of 7600 prisoners.. don't know where the others went






[edit on 9/6/2005 by QuietSoul]

Originally posted by Thatoneguy
okay then, lets not give them a place to live. Lets let them all roam the streets free, wherever they want to go. No money, no food. Some have a lost everything they have and feel that they've got nothing to lose.

The government is giving them a place to live and if they have somewhere else that they can go to they have the option to leave.

I don't see this as a prison. It's an attempt to keep these people in order because it could be much worse without it, for everyone.

Or am I missing the point?

I don't think there's any point you can miss. I believe the rest of us had, up until this point, tried desparately to miss your point. The U.S. government is not required to assist a single person in need. But through the voice of the American citizens it has heard loud and clear that in times of need we will step forward and help. The government decided, based on the perceived and real compassion of the American citizenry, to build a bureacratic agency that would dole out compassion in the name of the people. They failed. The money they have taken, and will continue to take, to fund FEMA comes from the compassionate people's pockets. The people who will continue to step forward and assist their fellow man in time of need - even after they themselves have been robbed by the bungling bureacrats.

Basic needs being met by charitable contribution, or stolen tax dollars in inept bureaucratic moves, should never require payment in the form of inalienable rights and inherent freedoms of the U.S. citizen.

Some of these people will be better off now, getting better food and shelter than they have had in their lives. Some of these people have lost everything and now stand on level ground with those who have been lifted up.

It doesn't matter. The price for charity is zero. And lest there ever be any price attached to it, it will never be the relinquishing of personal rights and freedoms for those basic needs.

These measures are not for the purpose of controlling these people. Not if they are being done in my name and with my tax dollars. They are to supply basic needs for the purpose of survival. These people owe me nothing, and more importantly they owe the governmental agencies that are providing these services in my name less.

You are not diminished as a citizen because you have been diminished in assets.

What if this camp is designated for some of the 5,000+ meth-heads from New Orleans? (Perhaps a few hundred crackheads and heroin addicts mixed in that number as well). Then it would make even more sense to have a "you can leave but nobody comes in" policy. Otherwise there is going to be an avenue for drug trafficing, and even more troublesome methlabs in the kitchens (probably the #1 reason they have eliminated the stoves etc portion of the camps). If you leave and pick up $100 worth of materials (common household chemicals and cough syrup) you can then bring it back and cook up around five or six thousand hits of crystal meth.

When you consider the statements from some of the officers "the kind of people" this begins to make even more sense. Sounds to me like you've visited one of the designated refugee camps for known addicts.

Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin - Friday, September 2, 2005 - transcript from radio interview

And one of the things people -- nobody's talked about this. Drugs flowed in and out of New Orleans and the surrounding metropolitan area so freely it was scary to me, and that's why we were having the escalation in murders. People don't want to talk about this, but I'm going to talk about it.

You have drug addicts that are now walking around this city looking for a fix, and that's the reason why they were breaking in hospitals and drugstores. They're looking for something to take the edge off of their jones, if you will.

And right now, they don't have anything to take the edge off. And they've probably found guns. So what you're seeing is drug-starving crazy addicts, drug addicts, that are wrecking havoc. And we don't have the manpower to adequately deal with it. We can only target certain sections of the city and form a perimeter around them and hope to God that we're not overrun.

Originally posted by Valhall

I don't think there's any point you can miss. I believe the rest of us had, up until this point, tried desparately to miss your point. The U.S. government is not required to assist a single person in need. But through the voice of the American citizens it has heard loud and clear that in times of need we will step forward and help. The government decided, based on the perceived and real compassion of the American citizenry, to build a bureacratic agency that would dole out compassion in the name of the people. They failed. The money they have taken, and will continue to take, to fund FEMA comes from the compassionate people's pockets. The people who will continue to step forward and assist their fellow man in time of need - even after they themselves have been robbed by the bungling bureacrats.

Basic needs being met by charitable contribution, or stolen tax dollars in inept bureaucratic moves, should never require payment in the form of inalienable rights and inherent freedoms of the U.S. citizen.

Some of these people will be better off now, getting better food and shelter than they have had in their lives. Some of these people have lost everything and now stand on level ground with those who have been lifted up.

It doesn't matter. The price for charity is zero. And lest there ever be any price attached to it, it will never be the relinquishing of personal rights and freedoms for those basic needs.

These measures are not for the purpose of controlling these people. Not if they are being done in my name and with my tax dollars. They are to supply basic needs for the purpose of survival. These people owe me nothing, and more importantly they owe the governmental agencies that are providing these services in my name less.

You are not diminished as a citizen because you have been diminished in assets.

Well said!

Thank you for posting this, Valhall. Of course a WATS from me, too. This is some ridiculous *Horse Pucky*.

Mod Edit: Removed Profanity

[edit on 9/9/05 by FredT]

Brilliant Valhall, as per usual.

But why are survivors being prevented from staying in NO, and scavenging to live, when THIS is the alternative?

...Wish I'd seen this before I posted my little effort.

Something I don't hear mentioned enough, although the
BBC covered it, the remarks of a Swiss journalist; FEMA
had $10B set aside several years ago, for strengthening
New Orleans' dikes and other engineering projects, but
GW spent the money on Iraq! How often do Americans
need to hear that no WMD's were found, and our presence
there is unconstitutional! 911 was an inside job, George
Tenet was the whipping boy for GW's intelligence failure!
Murder will always be justified by criminal morons!
If drowning a city isn't murder, when all the studies
showed it was a disaster waiting to happen and yet
do nothing to fix it, then I don't know what is. But I'll
admit that New Orleans is just the poster child for
what Katrina did to a much larger area.

They are very correct in being worried about a possible riot if any one group is seen as being favored over another. Look at what happened in New Orleans; the looting, the murder, the rape, the violence. There is no way of telling how any of these people will react over the next few months so the only way to attempt to keep them under control is to treat them as equally as possible.

That means identical clothing, identical meals, identical sleeping accomidations, etc.

Human beings do not handle change well. Nearly all of us will default to the most basic of survival instincts when our lives are threatened with violence, starvation, or some combination of the two.

The reason they told you that anyone leaving would not be allowed back inside is to avoid someone leaving and bringing back items that will be seen as a luxury. Someone will try and take it and violence will be the inevitable result.

Originally posted by thrival
Something I don't hear mentioned enough, although the
BBC covered it, the remarks of a Swiss journalist; FEMA
had $10B set aside several years ago, for strengthening
New Orleans' dikes and other engineering projects, but
GW spent the money on Iraq! How often do Americans
need to hear that no WMD's were found, and our presence
there is unconstitutional! 911 was an inside job, George
Tenet was the whipping boy for GW's intelligence failure!
Murder will always be justified by criminal morons!
If drowning a city isn't murder, when all the studies
showed it was a disaster waiting to happen and yet
do nothing to fix it, then I don't know what is. But I'll
admit that New Orleans is just the poster child for
what Katrina did to a much larger area.

That money was spent on Iraq because Iraq is a far greater concern than a single mid-sized city. Iraq's situation affects the entire planet. New Orleans affects the United States.

Further, reports about the state of New Orleans and the levee system have been available since (at least) the Regan administration. This means that both political parties had a chance to fortify the levees and chose to instead spend the money elsewhere. If blame is to be placed for not spending tax dollars on increasing protection for New Orleans then it should be placed on both parties and on every member of congress who sat or still sits in congress from the time the first reports were presented. Put another way, this is NOT just Bush's (the current one) fault.


Continuing, nobody in our government was going to spend tens of billions of dollars to shore up a levee system to protect a city that *never* suffered a direct hit from a category 4 or 5 hurricane. It was seen as such a remote possibility that they decided it wasn't financially worth the effort and for over two decades they were correct.

There is no indication that spending the money would have kept the city safe from the hurricane.

[edit on 6-9-2005 by boredom]

blargh. wrong button. =P

[edit on 6-9-2005 by boredom]

Originally posted by mOjOm
Does it seem to strange to anyone else that within a matter of days FEMA has leased this whole place, set up complete communications, security, staff, organized id and housing systems, setup a system of rules which everyone has already been trained to understand, prepared organized buckets of toys for the kiddies, racks of clothes, etc. etc. etc...???

I mean it's not like the church leased out the property last month or even last week, yet the paperwork has all been done and the staff is ready and in place.

For a government agency that didn't even show up until almost a week after the crisis hit, it sure seems a bit odd that something like this would come together so well so soon.
.............

I think everyone is overeacting.

To anwser your question about the lease and how it was possible that the government prepared this place so fast, here is the anwser directly from Valhall's post.

This past week the Southern Baptist association of Oklahoma offered the facility as a place to house refugees from the Katrina disaster. Each church owning a cabin was then called to find out if they would make their cabin available. Churches across the state agreed.

First people start complaining that things have taken too long, and now a member complains because FEMA prepared these places too fast?......


Am I missing something here?

Valhall, maybe you remember that a month or so ago I was talking exactly about this sort of thing. Being able to prepare for disasters that we have never seen before, and preparing to relocate hundreds of thousands and even millions of people from the coastal areas that could be affected by such disasters.

The relocation of these people is probably the biggest that has happened in US history, or one of the biggest. I don't think these places are set up as "detainments camps," and I don't think that people would be living for very long in these places, maybe a couple months or so until these people can be relocated back to NO, ( I do not recommend anyone doing this, even if everything is put back to normal ) or relocating them to new places where they can restart their lives back to normal.

Many of these people have nothing at all, and they have to start from scratch. Would you prefer if these people were left to fend for themselves?

Any place that is set up like these refugees centers would need to have law enforcement, and rules. You can't expect the thousands of people to behave good, look at what happened even after the second day after the hurrican passed over NO.... People were being killed, women were raped, there was looting and police officers and other people trying to help were being shot at.

Do you want something like what happened in NO to happen again in these refugees centers?.....

Then, if FEMA and those who helped set up these centers if they would not have prepared the places and had not set rules and laws in place and riots, looting, deaths and rapes occur, then once again we are going to have Americans protesting and blaming the government for not setting up these refugees centers properly, with rules, laws and provisions for everyone....

I think some people are overeacting. It seems to be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't".....just like always.


---Edited to add comments---

[edit on 7-9-2005 by Muaddib]