After the failure of local authorities to deal with the case, six New Orleans police officers have been charged in federal court with either murder or conspiring to cover-up the murder of two unarmed black men (one mentally-disabled) on the Danziger Bridge, and wounding four others in an incident a few days after Hurricane Katrina hit. Five other officers plead guilty to being involved in what they admit were unjustified shootings. In another incident, hate crime charges have been leveled against a white man who one witness described as devolving into a rabid animal as he sought black “looters” to shoot and kill; he shot and severely wounded at least one man, and may have been responsible for other black men found shot dead in the vicinity. According to the witness, “It was like he got the taste of blood, and he was out for more.” Again, local officials had done nothing to prosecute the man. In another incident, caught on tape, a 66-year-old black man, merely seeking information, was beaten bloody by two police officers; once more, these officers were not held to account.
These were not the only incidents of where humanity took a backseat. The right-wing media liked to portray the stranded black population in the city in barbaric terms, but it was the so-called “civilized” people who turned-out to be less human. Take the case of Dr. Anna Pou, who a New Orleans grand jury, not unexpectedly it seems, refused to indict on murder charges. Pou had been accused of euthanizing patients in her care so that she could make her escape in the days after Katrina; two nurses testified that she administered or directed them to administer lethal doses of morphine or the sedative midazolam.
Pou claimed that the patients were not likely to live out the aftermath of the storm once the power went out, and were suffering unendurable pain. But in a New York Times story last year on the case, new information reveals a much more sickening spectacle that greeted relief workers: 45 decomposing bodies were found, many of them left in a makeshift morgue in the Memorial Medical Center’s chapel—suggesting that many more people may have been euthanized against their will. Pou would claim that “informed consent” was impossible in the conditions, and justified her own actions under the premise that the sickest or more severely injured people were to be evacuated last—if at all. That is to say, save yourself, and let the rest die—with the proviso of making their deaths as “painless” as possible, if you can get away with it.
Although it is possible that Pou was not the only doctor at the hospital involved in the euthanasia, she seemed to be the most “enthusiastic.” Pou appeared to be “energetic and jumped into the center of the action” while patients were being “categorized” for fitness for immediate evacuation, with 3 being the “least” fit. Pou took personal charge of category 3 patients that were still left on the seventh floor of the hospital. After most of the hospital had been evacuated, Pou was left to her own devises on what to do with these remaining patients. The Orleans Parish coroner, Dr. Frank Minyard, would later testify that he was surprised about how many of Pou’s “patients” were not suffering from pain issues, yet they were given lethal doses of pain medication.
After the grand jury verdict, Pou took to touring the country to try to justify her actions, with some success, it seems. She was even able to help craft laws that makes it difficult to charge doctors with crimes or sue them for involvement in involuntary euthanasia during natural disasters. Most doctors everywhere declare her a “hero,” or at least don’t pass judgment. But for those who take simple human decency into account, the smell of inhumanity is as powerful as the one that greeted those workers who first discovered the grisly spectacle.
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