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By Anna Skinner
Associate News Editor
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The Manatee County Sheriff's Office in Florida confirmed that all inmates and deputies were safe following Hurricane Milton's arrival on Wednesday night.
On Tuesday afternoon, a Manatee County Jail deputy confirmed to Newsweek that the facility, just south of Tampa, was not planning on evacuating approximately 1,200 inmates ahead of Milton making landfall.
The decision was made even though the jail was located had a Zone A classification and evacuation orders had been issued for Zones A through C in the county. The storm made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in Siesta Key on Wednesday night, 36 miles south of the jail.
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"As expected, the Manatee County Jail remained fully operational as Hurricane Milton passed through our area. We had no flooding or damage to the building," Manatee County Sheriff's Office public information officer Randy Warren told Newsweek on Thursday morning.
"With the exception of a few inmates with medical and special needs, no other inmates were relocated to the second level. That was done yesterday, as a precaution."
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Warren added that the jail used emergency generators to maintain power to the facility.
"There were also no issues with our drinking water, or food supply. Services continue as normal," he said.
However, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Prison Project director David Fathi told Newsweek that the jail's decision could have legal consequences.
"Counties or sheriffs or governments that make that decision not to evacuate incarcerated people when they're in directly in harm's way are on very thin legal ice," Fathi said.
"The Supreme Court has said that when you incarcerate someone, when you take away their ability to fend for themselves, you take on a number of affirmative obligations toward them, one of which is to provide reasonable safety.
"So knowing full well this is a potentially deadly storm and recognizing that by evacuating everyone else, but making a decision to leave prisoners to fend for themselves in this catastrophic weather event, is quite probably a violation of the Eighth Amendment that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment," he told Newsweek
Fathi said it is "important to remember" that incarcerated people are part of the community and should be treated as such.
"Whether they're in jail and held pretrial and presumed innocent or people who have been convicted and sent to prison, they're all part of our community," he said.
"The vast majority of them are coming back to our community to be our neighbors, and it's just not right to write them off in situations like this and leave them to fend for themselves in situations that everybody recognizes are lethal and have potential to cause serious injury and death."
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