[originaltext]W: We walked, probably 200 people, about a two-hour trek. We got

W: We walked, probably 200 people, about a two-hour trek. We got to the bridge. Then police stopped us with shotguns. They were shooting guns to keep people from crossing the bridge getting out of the city.
M: Maybe there was no place in the small town for hundreds of evacuees to go. Did anyone say anything to you about that? Or did they give you any other reasons why they wouldn’t let you across?
W: What we were told by the deputies is that they were not going to allow another New Orleans and they weren’t going to allow a Superdome to go into their side of the bridge Greta, and as a matter of fact...
M: What did you think they meant by that?
W: Well, this is the direct quote taken from the police chief himself, which is "...If we let these people in, our city would look like New Orleans, burned, looted and pillaged." So to us that reeks of absolute racism since our group that was trying to cross over was women, children, predominantly African-American. I would say out of 100 people you could count three white folks.
M: Well, the chief says that his police force is pretty mixed between African-Americans and white people. But who told you to cross the bridge?
W: We were told by the commander at the police command post at Jerez, that we should cross that bridge, and there would be buses waiting to take us out. So we were following the advice. We were told we can’t go to the Superdome. We can’t go to the Convention Center. There’s no place else to go. He told us to go across the bridge, which is what we attempted to do.
M: So those New Orleans police officers told you to go across the bridge. And as you’re walking across the bridge, what do you see?
W: It’s a pretty steep incline, because you’re coming from the flat surface up to a pretty high bridge, as you can see. So it took a while for the group to make it up there. We had people in wheelchairs, we had people in strollers, people on crutches, so we were a slow moving group. And we didn’t think anything when we saw the deputies there. Then all of a sudden we heard shooting. But that wasn’t so unique, because we had been hearing shooting every day. But it was so close. Then people began to run back toward us in a panic, saying the police are shooting at us. And I said that can’t be right. That doesn’t make any sense.
M: And your crowd dispersed, but a group of you, about 80 or so, I understand, decided to just kind of camp out near the bridge. And you say, then the police came and actually took food from you and took away your water? Why did they do that?
W: This is what was so disheartening to us, is because we were a group of like some really sick older folks and some young folks in between an encampment. And we had food that someone had stolen for us and given to us at this camp, and we had some food as well. So now we were a community that was able to have food and water, and pretty safe shelter in between the minimal traffic going through. It was at dusk time. Right at night time when the sheriffs deputy came up to us and held a gun to us and jumped out of his car with the gun aimed at us, screaming and cursing and yelling at us to get the blank-blank freeway. And just, just so rabidly angry. And we tried to reason, we tried to talk. And he was just putting his gun in the face of young children and families.
M: Do you know where this sheriff was from? Do you know what department?
W: It said Gretena on the police car.
M: This is a really disturbing story. We’re trying to find out answers to it. I don’t think we’re going to get to the answers right away, but we want to keep following this. We want to talk to as many people on that bridge to find out from as many different perspectives.
1. How many people probably got to the bridge?
2. Why did the police force keep people from crossing the bridge, according to the man?
3. Why does the woman believe the police chief’s remarks are "absolute racism"?
4. Why were people a "slow moving group"?
5. What will the man probably do next?