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For a month now, Clifford Meyer, 35, has watched a coronavirus outbreak explode in the California prison where he is being held, feeling unable to protect himself. But recently he decided to say something – and found himself handcuffed, he told The Chronicle.
One day last week, when prison staff attempted to move a new man to an empty area in Meyer’s eight-man cell, he became nervous, he said in an interview via JPay, a prison courier service. Days earlier, another man who slept a few feet from Meyer had developed symptoms of COVID-19 and was abducted by staff, and Meyer suspected his new cellmate could be contagious as well. Meyer approached the officers’ station and complained, saying he did not want to be housed with a potentially contagious person. It was then that he was handcuffed, Meyer said.
Speaking in the background, a state official confirmed there had been a confrontation with Meyer but refuted the prisoner’s account, claiming Meyer had become aggressive with staff trying to move prisoners according to established protocols.
According to Meyer, officers placed him in a separate holding cell. He said a sergeant told him the virus wasn’t a big deal and that it would be better if “we all got the virus”, including the staff, “so we can just get over it, because he said hardly anyone gets sick. it. “Soon after, the handcuffs were removed,” Meyer said, “and he was returned to his cell.
Meyer’s wife Joy Herbert-Meyer was horrified when her husband described the incident to her.
“They are gravely neglected and endangered every day,” said Herbert-Meyer, a 43-year-old Stockton hospital worker.
In response to questions from The Chronicle, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) denied Meyer’s claims. “An HIV positive or quarantined inmate would not be moved to a unit or area where there were no positive results, and these protocols were followed here,” said CDCR spokesperson Vicky Waters, in a press release.
But the men in custody and their lawyers warn that the mixing of exposed and unexposed prisoners occurs regularly at the SATF. Speaking via JPay, five prisoners said the root cause of the problem is the same one that has long made it difficult to control the virus in many of California’s 35 state prisons: the facility does not have enough space to manage the epidemic.
People exposed to the virus should be quarantined – separate from others. According to guidelines released in October by the Prison Health System, prisoners who live in single cells with strong doors are more immune to the virus than those who are housed in larger cells and dormitories. But at SATF, the lack of cellar accommodation means large groups of men are quarantined together, meaning prisoners who are contagious – but not yet diagnosed – can infect others. Sometimes, according to the prisoners, the facility also lacks space to isolate patients with confirmed infections.
“They are forcing us to live with other people who have contracted the virus,” said Lyle Crook, 54, who has served 31 years of life in prison. “We have all been exposed.”
The space shortage is so severe, the men in custody say, that the infected men have been kept outside in the cold to wait for beds in COVID-19 housing units.
On November 27, the SATF reported 325 new cases of coronavirus in a single day. There were not enough isolation beds ready to accommodate all of the infected men. That day, a prisoner named Leon Brown said he saw around 40 patients standing and sitting in the prison yard from early afternoon until nightfall, when the temperature dropped to 40 degrees. Several men were in their sixties or more; a few were shivering, Brown said, and some “looked really sick.”
On the same day, Brown said, staff members told two of his cell mates that they had tested positive for the coronavirus, but the men were left in the cell overnight with uninfected men before. to be removed.
Waters, a spokesperson for the CDCR, said patients brought outside on November 27 had been moved there “for a short period” while their isolation accommodation was being cleaned up. The CDCR did not specifically respond to Brown’s claim about infected males in his cell, but generally denied that such mixing was happening.
Waters added that over the past two weeks, the prison has responded “with coordinated efforts” to the increase in cases at SATF. Three gyms have been reserved for COVID-19 patients, she said. Prisoners are subjected to mass testing every week and additional health workers have been assigned.
The prison outbreak comes amid a wider rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations across California and the country, as the virus continues to spread and governments impose new restrictions on businesses and gatherings.
During the pandemic, 31 in 1,000 people in California were infected, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ratio in the state prison system is seven times higher – 225 cases per 1,000, according to the CDCR’s web tracker – and more than 3,000 prisoners have tested positive across the system in the past two weeks. As of 25 November, the last date the figures were posted, 1,430 CDCR staff were also infected.
“It’s really scary because the deaths are lagging behind the active cases,” said Sophie Hart, an attorney at the Berkeley nonprofit prison law office, who represents those incarcerated in the court challenges against the CDCR. “I’m afraid we will see a spike in deaths again in a few weeks.”
In recent months, medical experts and judges have urged Gov. Gavin Newsom to release substantial numbers of prisoners, saying it was the best way to save lives and relieve pressure on community hospitals treating incarcerated patients. Newsom has agreed to expedite the release of approximately 7,400 detainees in certain categories. But the administration has resisted more dramatic publications, saying they could jeopardize public safety.
In the meantime, at facilities like SATF, infections are on the rise.
Despite its name, the SATF is not just a prison for drug addicts. Surrounded for miles of farms in the Central Valley, it has low and high security units, a mix of cell and dormitory accommodation, and over 750 prisoners with documented physical disabilities housed there due to the terrain. dish.
The prison experienced its first coronavirus outbreak at the end of August. Officials tried to slow the spread by quarantining entire dormitories, but in some cases it was too late; the men inside had been exposed and the others were trapped with them.
For example, in September, SATF officials quarantined two dormitories containing around 200 men, including 78 physically disabled, according to a case filed in November by the Prison Law Office. Throughout September, as the virus stalked dormitories, 67 of 78 disabled men were infected, including 24 in wheelchairs and three legally blind men.
The CDCR responded to the tribunal that it is committed to providing “safe and accessible housing” to detainees with disabilities and that it has made “significant and comprehensive efforts to contain and minimize the effects of an unprecedented global pandemic. “.
Jason Fagone is a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @jfagone
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