Meet the Community in Louisiana Where Police Throw People in Jail First and Then Investigate

Source: reason.com - Friday, December 30, 2016
Imagine being treated the same way a person arrested for a felony is treated—brought into jail, strip searched, imprisoned—even though you aren't arrested. Worse yet, imagine being treated that way because you might have been a witness to a crime and police wanted to interview you. That's exactly what had been happening down in Louisiana in Evangeline Parrish (population 33,500) and its town of Ville Platte (population 7,300). According a long-term Department of Justice investigation that was just released in December, police and sheriff's offices there had a long-established practice of jailing people for days without charges or warrants as "investigative holds." The practice is extremely unconstitutional but apparently had been policy. Police held people for days without charging them with crimes, but often suspected them of having committed crimes. According to the DOJ report the detention was partly because the police thought these people were guilty of something but lacked actual evidence, so police used the opportunity to keep them behind bars while they looked for something to hit them with. They were forced to sleep on the floor in jail and were not allowed to contact the outside world and let people know what had happened to them. They were essentially "disappeared" by law enforcement officials: Investigative holds initiated by [Ville Platte Police Department] VPPD often last for 72 hours—and sometimes significantly longe

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