This story was told by a person incarcerated at Calipatria.
UCI: I’m so sorry to hear that. It’s heartbreaking, truly. How has the situation changed in the beginning of the pandemic? Were they doing anything differently? I know you said that they started doing those things around November, October, but maybe like March, April or even June, July, were they doing anything?
Caller: They were, they weren’t doing nothin’, no they weren’t. They weren’t doin’ nothin’ of that sort.
UCI: I understand.
Caller: They were just, we had regular like stuff like that. And now they’re basically tellin’ us we can’t have visits with our family unless we had COVID-19 already. And we’re like okay what if we tested negative? Why can’t we have our visits? And they said because we could still possibly be transporting it or what not. Which we understand but it’s like nobody has a real concrete plan to maneuver us, and shut it down and contain it.
They did one- they did an early release one time. You have people here that’s less than 60 days to the house, couple of months to the house and stuff, that are not violent offenders, they’re not sex offenders. They’re not like people that should be deemed like you know what I’m sayin’? Like why aren’t they being released early to make more room and stuff like that? And they’re not doin’ it. They did it one time and they stopped.
UCI: I understand.
Caller: So it’s like, all that stuff it’s just like it’s just crazy like it’s really wild. They uh, they used to have spray bottles outside the showers to clean the showers after each person showered. They stopped that. They used to make us like uh, they just, it’s everything they was doin’ to profile it.
Pretty much. I wouldn’t say, I wouldn’t say so far like on some, they pretty much did though. Because that one time they were sayin’ okay, uh they stopped it, they stopped, this is where we thought they messed up first, because obviously we can’t give it to each other so it’s gonna come from the outside.
We understand you guys are gonna, the proper COs and staff they’re gonna uh, be seein’ their families and stuff like that. When they first, when they first did it they shut the, when they shut the, when they first shut the prison onto this like COVID protocol whatever, all they had servin’ us was the COs. And we were like how are you guys the only ones serving us when you’re the ones giving us? We should still be able to service our food. How we was doin’ it.
But, and then but as soon as that happened like two weeks later, more spikes started happening, more spikes started happening so we like, the only way that’s goin’ on is y’all given’ it to us.
