Anna Pou speaks

She tells her side of the story to Newsweek:

I actually felt sorry for Mr. Foti. What he did was so unprecedented and is typically not done. I know he had his reasons for doing it, but I just felt sorry that he couldn’t accept or respect the grand jury’s decision. Most prosecutors, if they don’t agree, they accept the grand jury’s decision graciously. Basically he didn’t show any respect for the grand jury’s hard work. I’m not going to dwell on that. I’m really going to move forward with my life. I’m not going to focus on Mr. Foti. I don’t want to go backwards.

Comments

Anonymous
We are still a nation of great people–governed by moral pygmies. It brings tears to my eyes to have watched the courage and spiritual faith with which this woman has dealt with this affair. It enrages me that a petty career politician who, like me, was safely hunkered down when the winds blew, would so shabbily treat those who had to courage to put leave off securing their own property and loved ones, and stay in the path of apocolyse to serve.
Anonymous
Spiritual faith?
This miscarriage of justice at the hands of those that view others with veneration almost superstitious is a a parody of modern Western secular values. Those that have transgressed against all that is correct deserve no sympathy or accolades for allowing this horrific outcome to have come to pass.
MedMom
Anon 5:06, whose hands have miscarried justice, the doctor’s or the prosecutor’s? Your comment is a bit vague.
medmom
…and I’m not sure what horrific outcome you’re alluding to. The deaths of those at the hospital were indeed horrific, but not because a doctor chose to administer some sedatives and pain medications to ease their suffering. If anything, Dr. Pou’s actions made their deaths, which were INEVITABLE in that scenario, much less horrific.
Anonymous
What I find most remarkable about this is that literally nobody is held responsible for the conditions that lead up to this – the fact that nobody came to evacuate them, that the patients were left there to die. And yet the one attempt by the government to hold someone responsible is… someone who had no responsibility for the situation devolving to where it did, but chose to stay behind and help others. Anna Pou could have just left and avoided the hell of the Katrina nightmare altogether. There was absolutely nothing in it for her to stay. What did she get for it? A political witch hunt. What a pathetic indictment of our government.
Anonymous
any movement (or legal basis) on having the prosecutor go down the path of the misguided Yale incident?
Anonymous
7:13:
Were you thinking of the other four-letter university, Duke?
Anonymous
Who exactly is anon 5:06 talking about? If you have something to say why not just come out and say it and stop beating around the bush?
Anonymous
I’m afraid Katrina is one of those events that can’t fully be understood unless you were there. The only real disaster assistance came from those that chose to step up to the challenge. The US Coast Guard that risked their lives rescuing stranded and sick; Cajuns that ran police road blocks to take food and water to Orleanians dying on the road; Drs and Nurses who chose to stay behind. I treated police who had been beaten by other police, critical patients abandoned by their families to die in the flood, gunshots and fractures, bone cancer patients with no pain meds, HIV/AIDS patients with nowhere to go, drug addicts insane from withdrawal. I know Nurses that took turns bagging patients in the dark until they just couldn’t anymore. Almost every Doc I know was armed with good reason and stayed that way for several months post storm. You really had to be there to understand the perversion of this filthy politician’s actions or at least have lived through a similar event where those expected to provide civilized support failed or even became part of the problem and your survival depended on the character of those around you.
Just my opinion and observation.
UroCanswer
Her description of the hospital condition, with human waste and rancid air, sounds like a description of war. Who could possibly understand what it was like to be in her shoes? I find it amazing that she is talking at all to the media, with civil suits still pending. Sad..
-UC
===
http://www.UroCanswer.com
Anonymous
This doc didn’t have the guts to run road blocks or sneak into New Orleans. I hunkered down in a nearby city, did a little desultory service at the local field hospital which he found overwhelming, and focused on taking care of MY family. Can I judge my peers who voluntarily stayed in those conditions? Hell, no. In fact, I don’t think that I am their peer.
Where was Foti and his assitants when the NOPD was confiscated guns from otherwise helpless old people living in lawless chaos, when some elements of the NOPD were running as rampant as street gangs, when the authorities were forcibly preventing rescue of people, when his old bud running the NOPD was cracking and spreading hysterical rumors? When inmates were drowning in the hellhole of Orleans Parish Prison that he built his carear creating. He is the chief law enforcement figure in the state. Where was he? I have never heard an answer to that.
He wants to do some good? He needs to help address the complete collapse of the justice system in New Orleans where the murder rate is skyrocketing to astronomical levels but the district attorney’s office has virtually lost all compacity to prosecute or even bring charges.
Count Iblis
Was assistant Attorney General Don Valeska involved in this case?
Anonymous
Who holds Foti to accountability???
Anonymous
The voters. There is an election in 2 months. Are the docs going to sit back and watch or participate this time?
Count Iblis
Well, although the voters may act as a positive force this time, we have to keep in mind that this system in which people can vote for the AG, prosecutors etc. is to blame for this problem in the first place.
Count Iblis
This is what I mean
“To an outraged public, Mr. Foti’s motivations in the conduct of these arrests are clear: create controversy, make “news” and declare these caregivers as common, calculating killers. To patients, peers and people who know them best, nothing could be further from the truth.”
The solution is to simply change this ridiculous system where people can vote for the AG, judges etc.
Anonymous
AG is an office that has been abused in the past in Louisiana, and it’s powers curtailed in the current 30 year old constitution. Foti apparently thought the old one was in effect, as some of his actions were outside of the scope of his office.
Given our political system in LA, an AG appointed by the governor would be predictably a sort of political police and serve to create a fascist state. Election is probably better, but when the culture itself is corrupt, not much better. Just in his power to dispense state legal work to law firms, the AG wields tremendous power in the legal community beyond the direct powers delegated to him. Why do you think the state sheriffs association has endorsed him for reelection already, dispite his embarassing incompetence? Because of the power of incumbency.
Why was he willing to go after a physician without even the appearance of fairness and not even bother to pick a prey on the fringe of the herd, instead going after a target that he knew would enrage the docs? Could it be because he beefed up the Medicaid fraud unit, and, given the imprecision of coding rules, they all know that they can be brought down for a minor mistake and dare not get politically involved? Don’t laugh. I have seen it happen in Louisiana: the investigations for a few diverted scripts starting days after a foray into the political arena.
Docs need to give every spare dime to his opponents and let him know they will not be rolled this way–but due to campaign finance disclosure rules and the tradition of using office not just for rewarding friends but for punishing enemies, I doubt that they will.
Anonymous
Isn’t LA the state of the congressman who was re-elected despite having been caught with “cold hard cash” in his freezer? And he has not been unseated yet…? Oh what folly…

Anna Pou speaks

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