This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Chino.
As soon as COVID hit this year, the movement started. Staff for reasons unknown and counterintuitive shuffled 20 to 50 people at a time to different buildings, different yards, and different prisons. At this time, the finger pointing also started. Correctional officers (COs) blamed medical; medical blamed COs. One correctional officer in particular told me it was the fault of the “Libs” and “Dems” that we were being moved so much.
The only agreement between the powers-that-be was “we are following orders”. No one really knows the logic or reason behind these orders, but we all paid and continue to pay the price.
In April 2020 I was part of 21 people moved into an emergency housing unit, set up in the gym. Basically, a basketball court with 50 bunks set up from baseline to baseline, and sideline to sideline. There were approximately 20 guys already in there from a previous move a couple weeks prior. Well, long story short, about three weeks into it, COVID got in there and more than half the guys tested positive.
Chino’s solution? Put the positive on one side of the court and the negative on the other. It’s brilliant!
After a few days, someone (obviously a genius) said, “We should move the positive people somewhere.” It took two more days to do the bed moves because one eight hour shift was evidently not long enough for the COs to enter 25 names into a computer. 25 other guys were moved in, while the positive guys were moved out. Over the next few months more and more guys in the gym caught COVID.
Their beds were usually filled in a day or two with non-positive inmates. In the end, when I was moved out in October 2020, there were four of us left that never caught it; at least 60 did catch it in the gym, and two died that I know of.
