This story was told by a person incarcerated at Avenal.
Caller: I think like they did for a while there where they just shut everything down and just stopped any you know intra-yard routes. You know where you allow inmates just because they’re exposed; like we had a situation here where an inmate there was a, there was the large outbreak going on in one of the other yards.
And so, they were moving any inmates that tested negative to our yard. And you know and so this inmate was moved to one of the dorms in the building that I’m in and cause he had tested negative and yet before he left he was letting the staff there know that he wasn’t feeling well. And so, and yet they moved him anyways.
And then upon moving him he moved to one dorm. And then two days later he was moved to the dorm that I was in. And then like three days later they take him over to medical and he ends up testing positive.
And so, two days later they send him back-, they send him back to his yard after he had already exposed you know a whole building to and plus, he was out using the phones and he was interacting with other inmates. And so, and we understand how and not always wearing masks and so and we already understand, and we see from the news, and from everything that’s going on, from what we’ve experienced here how fast this thing spreads like wildfire and stuff.
So, when you have one inmate who was over at a yard where they had a mass outbreak going on and just because this inmate tests positive you move him hoping he doesn’t test positive and then you have him less than a week later testing positive and then you move him back anyway. That just you know it just doesn’t make any sense.
You’re putting a lot of inmates at risk and then plus the building that I was in was supposed to be the quarantine building for all the inmates that were 60 and over to come and kinda have this be the building. And so, and there were a lot of those who didn’t test positive when the first outbreak came.
And so, you know you’re putting that at risk group to a higher risk by moving another inmate over who test positive when you when in the first place you were trying to protect those older inmates from catching the pandemic and or the virus.
And so, it just shows a lack of consistency and a lack of knowledge of what to do. And I understand they’re trying to do as best they could but if they would truly look at what the CDC and the WHO were trying to do and how they were trying to stop the spread, they seem to be just you know lighting fire to the virus and letting it spread you know instead of trying to contain it within individual inmate groups you know and individual buildings.
And so, you know I don’t know I just think the lack of consistency has been the most concerning you know and kind of the lack of care.
