Reference News Network, August 8 report - According to the Associated Press, on August 6, staff members of the New Orleans City Clerk's Office were sifting through a large landfill in an effort to recover court records that had been mistakenly discarded.

Photos exposed online show municipal workers searching through mountains of garbage for documents that had been mistakenly thrown away. Officials at both the city and state levels have expressed outrage.

Liz Murray, the Attorney General of Louisiana, stated on August 6 in a statement: "This is unacceptable, and I have many questions. I will demand the clerk to explain the details of this incident and which records were actually discarded."

Darren Lombard, the Clerk of the District Criminal Court, condemned the city's "serious negligence and carelessness" in handling public records in a statement. Photos released by the Criminal Court Clerk's Office showed municipal workers earlier this week pulling out torn documents from a pile of garbage next to an excavator.

Lombard said that on August 1, he was notified that containers holding official court documents had been moved from a trailer without his knowledge, and at least one container of documents had already been destroyed. He blamed the U.S. Public Works Agency for moving these documents擅自 (without authorization) and stated that municipal staff had been sent to try to recover them.

Lombard said: "Their findings are deeply disturbing: an entire container filled with official records from the clerk's office was thrown into the landfill mixed with regular garbage." He also said: "The documents were scattered throughout the yard, some were blown up by the wind, even drifting outside the safety fence."

Lombard explained that these records were stored in trailers and containers outside the court clerk's office because since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, there has been a "long-term lack of a safe, dedicated storage facility for court clerks." In 2005, the city's flood protection system collapsed, causing floods that resulted in the destruction of thousands of criminal case files.

Lombard, who took office in 2022, stated that he has repeatedly applied for funding to build a secure storage facility.

Lombard revealed that most of these court records date back to the 1950s to 1970s, including documents related to death penalty murder cases and violent sexual assault cases.

Leonard Bridgewater, a spokesperson for the Initiative for Justice Promise in the United States, said: "It is a dereliction of duty for the city government to be so careless about these life-and-death valuable archives, and it also violates people's rights - people have the right to access their own information." (Translated by Liu Baiyun)

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7536054574185071113/

Statement: The article represents the views of the author. Please express your opinion by clicking the [up/down] buttons below.