Rod Amis - Unbound

NEW ORLEANS - This is the story of my time in prison. Certain names have been omitted or disguised in order to protect the identities of people in harm's way.

29 May, 2003: An inmate at the Orleans Parish Prison (O.P.P) provided me with the opening line for this story: "American Justice? Look around you: it's just us." He was correct. In the tier I was sharing with him and thirty eight other men in the Templeman One facility of O.P.P. there were only two men who were not Black. The same had been true of the Receiving facility I had ended after being arrested on Sunday evening, 18 May, 2003, the majority of the inmates - at a ratio akin to 14:1 were all Black males. That is the color of what passes for justice in New Orleans. If you're Black, that's "probable cause" enough for any policeman to hassle you.

What was I in for? As far as I was concerned, as far as my roommate who was also arrested that night was concerned, as far as my attorney is concerned, my crime was Walking While Black. The arresting officers charged me with "Possession With Intent to Distribute Cocaine" despite the fact that I actually possessed no cocaine. In fact, all I did possess at the time of my arrest was thirteen dollars and a pack of American Spirits cigarettes.

But the New Orleans Police Department doesn't have to let little details like facts get in the way of arresting you if you are a Black man.

NEW ORLEANS - "If Louisiana and Mississippi were countries, they would have the highest incarceration rates in the world." That's just one insight from a major report to be released April 4th in New Orleans documenting the growth in Southern prison and jail populations over the last two decades, an explosion that not only shames the South but has sown the seeds of severe economic and social problems. - from "Report on Southern Prison Crisis To Be Released in New Orleans" April 4, 2003

The Arrest

How did this happen? I had gone to see "Matrix Reloaded" with Ian and Mary, Matt and Jo, and then headed home to prepare for my date with Ava. She asked for a raincheck at the last moment, so I sat at home enjoying a cocktail, then a visit from my friend Melissa who was going to a party on Dauphine Street. Melissa suggested that I come with but I demurred. I said I would think about it a bit. My roomie came home from work and said he would drop by the party before making his weekly pilgrimage to The Abbey and also suggested that I come with. I relented. But first we had to buy beer to take along, only good form. He was going to order some food in and have the beer delivered but, at the last moment, decided to forego the meal.

We decided to walk around the corner to the Circle K on Esplanade and split the price of a 12 pack. He gave me $7.00 (USD) toward the purchase. He waited outside smoking a cigarette while I went inside to make the purchase. I found the coolers locked and so asked the attendant if she could open one for me.

"We're not selling beer tonight," she told me.

Rod Amis

I thought that was rather odd and suspected that she meant she was not selling beer to me. It's easy to have this kind of thought when you're Black, especially when the person refusing you a service you know to be available happens to be White.

I went back outside and explained the situation to my roommate and handed him back his money.

"Hey you! Brother!" a police officer called to me, getting out of his patrol car, which had rolled up as I handed my roommate his money. "Come over here."

I did so.

"What did you just hand that guy?" he asked.

"Seven dollars," I replied. "We were going to buy beer, but the clerk told me they aren't selling any."

"Oh really?" the officer drawled. "You ever been arrested before?"

"No, sir," I responded.

"I find that hard to believe," he cracked. "Put your hands on the car. You have anything sharp in your pockets I should worry about?""

"No, sir. I just have thirteen dollars, my cigarettes and my house keys."

"Lean against the car and spread your legs," he ordered me, as his partner summoned my roommate.

While the first officer frisked and searched me, my roommate ran down the street. The second officer pursued him. I wondered what was going on. The first officer immediately put handcuffs on me.

When they brought my roommate back and searched him, they discovered cocaine in a lip balm container among his possessions.

"Did you give this to him?"" the first officer demanded.

"No, sir," I said.

"I think you did."

"He didn't give that to me," my roommate responded.

"We think he did," the second officer said.

After we were both handcuffed, we were placed in the police car and asked for our vital statistics: name, address, social security number, etc.

The officers called in the arrest and began filling out their forms.

It was about 12:35 a.m. After a few minutes another car arrived and I was taken out of the car again to be searched by two other officers. The first officers tightened my handcuffs - very tight, painfully so - after the second group of officers searched and interrogated me again. This time they took my money and my cigarettes but left me my house keys.

My roommate leaned over to me in the back of the squad car and whispered: "You know why they're treating you this way."

Yeah. Walking While Black.

In 1973, when Sheriff Charles C. Foti, Jr. was first elected to office, the inmate population was less than 800. Today, the total number of municipal, state, and federal inmates is over 6500. This situation is in part due to the increase in the number of inmates who are being held for the State Department of Public Safety and Corrections. The Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's Office is now one of the largest jails in the country. - From the online history of the New Orleans Sheriff's Department.

After driving us around with them for about two hours, during which time I complained to the officers that my left wrist was bleeding from the tight handcuffs, the officers took us to O.P.P. at between 2:30 and 3:00 a.m. By this time my wrists were swollen but the bleeding had stopped.

It took another four hours for the people at O.P.P. to process and book me, during which time I'd made a collect call to Matt to explain my situation and ask that he try to raise my bail from among our friends so that I could get out of jail as soon as possible.

Nor Iron Bars

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What I learned after I was booked was that it would not be that easy; I had been charged with felony possession with intent, and thus would have to face a magistrate before my bond could be set and bail made.

I was not taken to magistrate's court until the next evening. So I spent the night and day awake waiting in the Receiving cell block. The Receiving cellblock is a two-story structure containing forty cells built to house two occupants. Each cell is approximately ten feet wide by twelve feet deep and contains a stainless steel sink and commode and two bunks on the wall. Each bunk comes with a coarse blanket and a towel. To enter receiving you give up your clothing and are issued an orange pair of stretch pants and matching orange pullover shirt. You keep your own shoes and socks. This is where the regimentation of institutionalization begins. You must walk everywhere in single file. If you stop in transit, you must face the wall. You are not allowed to talk during the journey.

Though each of the cells in Receiving was designed to house two people, most of the cells in O.P.P. Receiving have three to five men in them, I learn. My cell is fortunate in that there are only three of us inside. The third (fourth or fifth) men must sleep on mattresses placed on the cell floor.

The cells on both levels are equipped with cameras so that you are under constant observation. The cells line two walls of a large chamber. On the second side wall is a television set perched on a pedestal low enough only to be reached to turn it on or off, adjust the volume or change the channel. There are also observation cameras and a speaker for the public address system mounted on this wall. At the front of the cellblock are more security windows and a steel door. If there were a fire on the block, that door would be the only exit. There are no windows, of course. And the block is lighted day and night.

Nobody asks you what you do in jail, they only ask you about your case. I was put in a cell with one of the few White guys on the cell block and a Black youth who claimed his family was one of judges and lawyers who would spring him soon. (When I was transferred from the block five days later, he was still waiting for his relatives to spring him.) He was a complete slob, a leech and a hustler who sucked up to the block rep - the guy charged with organizing serving us our food each day and assigning people to keep the block clean. He had b.o. that was hot feet away from him. I don't think he'd taken a shower since being arrested and never cleaned his clothes or his hair. It was a joy just being around him. And it was obvious he felt the same way about me. He had no compunction about voiding his bowels while the three of us were locked down during the daily "roll call" count or at night when there was "lights out."

Lights out in O.P.P. means that the main lights of the room are turned down and the lights in the cells are dimmed. It's like twilight in the natural world, though, because they never really turn the lights out in prison.

It was here in Receiving, as I waited - first for the magistrate's court hearing and then for being either "rolled out" (released on bond) or transferred to the general population of inmates - that I learned about the hierarchy behind bars, the mores, and how the system inside works when you're institutionalized.

The Alpha Male on every cell block and tier is the Block or Tier Rep. This is the person in charge of making sure your area is clean, swept and mopped, and in charge of communicating with the Correctional Officers (C.O.'s) and Sheriff's - O.P.P. is officially run by the Sheriff's Department - and in charge of portioning out the food to all the inmates under his charge three times a day. The Rep always gets more food than anyone else, with the exception of his favorites, who also eat better than every other inmate. The Rep smuggles in cigarettes, drugs, everything that can be made available to the area. The Rep can make your life pleasant or hellish. The Reps who are most insecure make sure that everyone knows their power and kow-tows to it. That's the hierarchy of jail.

The Rep I had in receiving, we'll call him "Jerk", was completely corrupt. He smuggled in, via a new inmate, marijuana on the second night I was incarcerated. He and his favorites shared it in his cell. He strong-armed people to keep him in cigarettes. He and his crew got extra bread and other food from the block's daily allotment of food in order to make themselves special meals at night. One thing I learned while still in receiving was about the creativity of inmates. They can take what little is left to hand and turn it into miraculous feasts and ingenious inventions to meet their needs. It's survival, after all.

Magistrate's Court

Magistrate's Court takes place in the evening. At about 7:30 p.m. the public address system announced that I was to appear at the door of the cellblock to be taken over to the court. When I arrived at the holding tank where they make you wait before being taken to chambers, I found my roommate and seven other people waiting there as well. We sat for about half an hour and then a Sergeant from the Sheriff's Department led us to the courtroom. The Sergeant who acted as clerk of the court gave us a short speech informing us how he wished to be addressed, letting us know that we were only here to have our bond decided, not to plead our cases, and that we could not ask any questions about our cases or make any statements. "Anything you say," he informed us, "will be used against you in court. So I suggest you don't say anything other than answer the questions we or the judge might put to you.

"Stand up when your name is called but don't say anything and don't ask any questions. You wait until your trial for that."

Because the yellow sheet informing me of my charges said that I had the right to ask for a preliminary hearing, in order to ascertain whether my charges even merited a trial, I asked the Sergeant if I should pursue this option.

"I always discourage people from doing that", he said, "because I think you're better off just keeping it simple here. Your bond will probably be light and if you ask for a prelim', you'll have to stay here in jail until you get a court date."

My roommate got up at that point and told how he was arrested with me and knew that I had no drugs on me and had never been a drug dealer. He said that he was the only one who possessed any drugs that night and had so informed the arresting officers. My roommate said that it was obvious to him that the officers simply wanted to charge me with something, anything. He said he was more than willing to testify to that.

The Sergeant said don't bring these details up. He said we should just let the judge set my bond.

The Sergeant then directed our attention to a television monitor above the bench which was divided into four sections. In one section was a view of the chambers where we sat. In another, a view of a chamber where the judge was reviewing the files, in another a view of the full room in that separate chamber, and in the final section a view of the bench in our room. The Sergeant explained that we should keep our eyes on that screen because that is where we would see the judge and the prosecutors talking about our individual cases.

Everyone whose cases were reviewed, with the exception of myself and my roommate, had multiple prior arrests and convictions. Most of them got off with $500 - $5,000 bonds. That meant that they only had to give a bail bondsmen 12% of the total, according to current Louisiana law, in order to be released from jail.

My roommate's bond was set at $5,000. That meant that he could get out by only paying a bondsmen $600. He was out the next day.

Despite the fact that I had no prior arrests or convictions, the District Attorney recommended that I be held on a $100,000 bond. The judge decided that was excessive and gave me a bond of $25,000, the highest awarded that night. That meant that I would need $3,000 to be released from jail.

"You know what happened," my roommate said, as we were being escorted back to the holding tank.

"I'm not sure," I said. "What?"

"Somebody decided that you're never getting out," he responded. "Where are you going to find three grand?"

"I don't know," I said.

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THROUGHOUT THE TIME I WAS INCARCERATED, from fellow inmates, from attorneys, and from friends, I always got variations on the same refrain:

"What type of half-assed drug dealers has NO DRUGS on him, has only thirteen dollars in pocket and does a street transaction with his damned roommate when he could have given him the drugs at home?"

I don't have an answer for those questions because I'm not a drug dealer. The New Orleans Police Department apparently makes it up as they go along, especially in the case of Black men.


Go to Part Two of "American Justice: New Orleans Style" the chronicle of Rod's incarceration.


Go to Part One of Rod's GLASS HOUSE "The End of Life as We Know It".

Pages: 1 | 2 | 3

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