Jonathan Garner and his family braved the storm in New Orleans and then stayed behind to help others evacuate. And it was when he was lending a helping hand that he says he was assaulted by the very people there to protect and serve.
Garner says in the days after the storm, he located an old grocery cart and spent hours wheeling elderly people safely to higher ground. But when the evacuation busses rolled into town, Garner says he ran to find his family before they got split up.
With no warning, Garner says a guardman who had been watching him help people all day turned his gun on him.
"He just hit me in the chest with the M-16," Garner recalls. He says the officer then demanded he get on the ground and threatened to sic his police dog on Garner. He says before he could get the a out of his mouth, the dog attacked. It tore at his body and legs before the officer called him off.
Garner took off and was separated from his family, making his way to the Astrodome four days later where he finally received medical attention. He says it's the all-too familiar story of racial profiling and police brutality.
"He could have warned me so I figure he wasn't doing his job, he just was looking to hurt somebody," says Garner, who was one of 50 Katrina survivors who arrived in Chattanooga Tuesday thanks to a local church partnership.
One look at the footage from New Orleans and it looks more like a war-zone than a city recovering from a hurricane. Looting and violence is running rampant and the result says Bishop Derrick Davis is pandemonium.
"When you go for days without food, when you go for days without a governing system, chaos erupts," Davis says. But he adds it's no excuse for the excessive force that is being used on the mostly poor, mostly black residents trying to survive. Garner agrees and can point to his scars as proof.
"If they got a handful of black people out there doing wrong and shooting at cops and everything, doesn't mean you have to treat us all the same way."
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