When a suspect or inmate is ill or injured, police take them to the same hospitals as law abiding citizens. Marlon Defillo, assistant chief with NOPD says, "If he or she has to be admitted into the hospital we will strongly encourage the individual have a private room away from the general public. And we establish a 24 hour round the clock guard detail on that individual." A prisoner may also be handcuffed or shackled if it doesn't interfere with their medical treatment.
Kenneth Scott is chief of police of the 80 officers at the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans. He says, "One of our policies is that when an inmate is not handcuffed, that there are two officers present. A lot of times we are a second officer." Chief Scott also says prisoners wear a gold armband, identifying them from the rest of the patients.
Before katrina the situation was different. Inmates were brought here to Charity hospital to a 6 to 8 bed secure wing. Defillo explains, "With Charity you had a wing. You actually had a wing where you had the Sheriff's office it was their responsibility. Once we made an arrest if that person was sick or injured and had to be admitted we would make sure we did the proper paper work. There was a transferal and then the person then became the responsibility of the sheriff's office." Post Katrina, there are no isolated inmate wings and prisoners and suspects remain the responsibility of the arresting agency -- taking an officer off the streets. Defillo adds, "We are going to sit down with University hospital officials Monday and look at their procedures. How can we best provide a good service to our police officers, but also the public and the inmate?" While problems appear isolated, he says the best case scenario would be to have an isolated area for prisoner patients again in the future.
