news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050922/ap_on_re_us/katrina_criminals_hk4
AP Criminals Among Katrina Refugees Sought By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press Writer Thu Sep 22, 8:17 AM ET MIDDLETOWN, RI - After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, federal offic ials flew Brian Murph and more than 100 other victims to Rhode Island. T hey were greeted by the governor and cheered by residents.
State police did criminal background checks on every refugee and found th at more than half had a criminal arrest records a third for felonies. Murph was the only one with an outstanding arrest warrant, for larceny a nd other crimes. Around the nation, state and local authorities are checking refugees' pas ts as they are welcomed into homes, schools, houses of worship and housi ng projects. "It's a balancing act," said Kyle Smith, deputy director of the Kansas Bu reau of Investigation. "We don't want to treat them like criminals after they have been traumatized, but we want to make sure they are in no dan ger nor the families they are housed with." Civil libertarians call the checks thinly veiled race and class discrimin ation against people who have suffered already. The checks are made on t hose evacuated or forced to seek help from charities or others in othe r words, people who are often black and poor. "I think it's happening partly because who these people are and where the y came from," said Steve Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island A CLU. "The mere fact that people have past criminal records in and of its elf doesn't say anything about harm to the community." Some state and local governments screened just those refugees evacuated b y the federal government. Others screened anyone placed in private homes and screened the hosts as well. In South Carolina, state police checked every evacuee flown there by the government. Of 547 people checked, 301 had criminal records, according t o Robert Stewart, state Law Enforcement Division Chief. While most had been law-abiding for years or had committed minor offenses , the group included those convicted of rape or aggravated assault. Two had warrants, but were not held because the states weren't interested in extraditing them. "This was all done for everyone's protection," Stewart said. "If you're g oing to be sheltering people, it would be prudent for people taking them in to know what criminal pasts they might have." The state police in West Virginia said roughly half of the nearly 350 Kat rina victims evacuated by the government to that state had criminal reco rds, and 22 percent have a history of committing a violent crime. In Massachusetts, where about 200 evacuees were flown to a military base on Cape Cod, criminal background checks turned up six sex offenders and one man wanted for rape in Louisiana. Two of the sex offenders have sinc e left the state, said Katie Ford, a spokeswoman for the state public sa fety office. In Tennessee, police checked every federal evacuee flown to Knoxville and found outstanding warrants for two people in Louisiana but Louisiana did not want to extradite them. In Texas, with more than 300,000 refugees, local officials have run 20,00 0 criminal background checks on evacuees, as well as the relief workers helping them and people who have opened up their homes. Most of the checks have found little for police to be concerned about. Ph iladelphia police found no criminals as of the middle of last week, even though the local ACLU branch objected to the checks themselves. Several states with thousands of refugees aren't checking criminal backgr ounds at all. Missouri has no formal effort to check its 6,000 refugees. Neither has California, which reported about 3,800 refugees earlier thi s month, or Maryland, Minnesota and Michigan, which together took in sev eral thousand evacuees. In Middletown, a community just north of Newport, several evacuees shrugg ed at the prospect of background checks and said they understood the sta te's desire to learn more about them. "I would like to know if there's any skeletons in the closet with my neig hbors or the community," said one refugee, 38-year-old Carmen Williams.
This undated police booking photo shows Brian Murph, one of more than 100 victims of Hurricane Katrina flown to Rhode Island from New Orleans last week by the federal government. Murph was arrested because he was wanted in Texas and Louisiana for larceny and other crimes. The warrants came up after a criminal background check, something state police condu cted for every refugee living in the housing development.
The informati on contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewr itten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associ ated Press.
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