Clank, clank, clank, clank came the distress signals rattled against jail windows by the men held within, in a scene fathomable were it in Calcutta, or Caracas, or the depths of the gulag, but in Brooklyn, really?
All too really. For a week the federal Metropolitan Detention Center, a facility where defendants await trial, wanted for electricity and heat through bitterly cold winter days and nights. Detainees huddle in cells dark by night, the glinting Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty in view, while day brought little relief from icy temperatures.
That some, many, even most confined there will eventually be found to have committed serious crimes should not matter: The conditions attested to by inmates, staff and a few select visitors _ all other communications with the outside world halted by emergency lockdown _ amounted to cruel and unusual punishment without a finding of guilt.
Some staff say the culprit was a fried-out electric control panel that pulled down the backup generator with it. Getting power and heat fully restored should have been a five-alarm emergency for the federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of a rudderless Justice Department.
Only with the arrival of hordes of protesters, among them family members of the incarcerated, and elected officials did the human crisis get the round-the-clock attention needed to spark the power back on. Shudder to think how long the suffering might have continued.
