This story was told by a person incarcerated at Chuckawalla.
Caller: Well, it started like when the pandemic started out there. They started locking stuff down and all that and eventually worked its way into the prison system. And currently it’s still in the prison system and there’s still currently outbreaks happening in the other yards.
And this yard, the facility has four yards and one of the yards that I’m on didn’t have an outbreak at all. Like we had no, zero cases whatsoever. And then they happened to have one of the buildings got sick. They emptied it out and our building ended up being the only one without any positive cases for a long, long time. For like three straight months.
One day they, they found two positive cases in our building and they moved them out of the building. They isolated them. And two days later they made an announcement that the whole building was moving out. The whole building got together, all the inmates in the building got together and said we refuse to move.
And medical said, do you understand the risk you guys are taking? We said yes absolutely, we do. But we also understand that the people that moved, like that went to isolation so they won’t get sick came back sick. They came back positive. So, we are, refuse to move anyways.
And they tested us again that same week, on a Friday. And they end up, all of a sudden, we’re all positive. Like four, five hours later everybody ends up being positive. And they start moving people left and right. At like at 10 at night.
I’ve seen people that were super healthy leave because they didn’t want to get sick come back all like pale like they just crawled out of a cave and haven’t seen the sun in months, and they came back pale.
There’s been a couple of deaths already from the, from our building. People that we know in our building and there’s still people tripping in uniform in the hospital from outside medical. And they’ve been like a lot of them recover and a lot of them unfortunately didn’t, you know. And it’s just been bad. And they say, they wanna make us social distance and all that.
They, I feel like they act like they care but I really think they don’t because they made us quarantine buildings out of one of the buildings in the yards. There’s three buildings, one of them became a quarantine building and sometimes, at first the cops were real precautious, the officers were real precautious of going in and out of that building with masks.
They took all the precautions to go in and come out, all the sanitation process to go in and out of that building. And little by little they started slacking and going in without masks and shaking hands with officers in that building without gloves and stuff. And eventually it just became an outbreak in the whole yard. And our yard was the only one again that did not have positive cases for like three months straight.
And when that happened, it started just going, becoming an ongoing thing. And there’s still people that go, that get sick and still go man down and go, get taken to us on medical because they have problems breathing, stuff like that.
And then the medical process that they had was just terrible. Like they say that high blood pressure was a cause of the COVID, and it wasn’t. Then when we were in that building isolated, it, the whole process was just terrible man.
The COs were just like yelling at us, screaming at us. It was just stressful, it was real stressful. And I believe that, that was just part of the, part of the I don’t know. It was just part of the I guess it was part of the procedure but the way they went about it was just horrible.
UCI: Wow. Oh, go ahead sorry.
Caller: Yeah sorry. I ended up being negative and I got positive. I got tested positive too. And I came back, ever since I’ve been back, I haven’t been, I haven’t, my normal routine is, it gets, sometimes it gets hard because it gets hard to breathe sometimes. Like, I’m out of breath already just by talking.
UCI: Yeah. So, would you, I mean you say they’re, right they’re quarantining certain people, kind of. Are they testing you guys, are you guys kind of afraid to be tested because of where you’ll end up? Are they testing, you know, staff?
Caller: I think they test the staff right. But here’s the thing, okay say I’m, there’s people here that are waiting like to go outside medical to get like operations done right. Like for hernias, and stuff like that right.
And when we come back from outside medical, they quarantine us for 14 days right so we don’t get the population sick, so they can control the so-called outbreak. If I’m gonna get quarantined for 14 days so I won’t infect the yard, why don’t the officers get quarantined too? They come directly back to the building.
UCI: So, the officers are kind of, I mean they get tested right but they aren’t really having to adhere to the same protocol as you guys as, you know, as the general population essentially?
Caller: Yeah. Pretty much because if they’re gonna quarantine me so I won’t infect the others around me, why don’t they quarantine the officers too instead of letting them come directly back to work. I mean you should see some of these guys they’re, like super pale. There’s an old guy that works here like four days out of the week. That guy’s like super pale, he coughs everywhere and he’s old you know. He’s like an older guy.
UCI: And are these, you know, are you guys required to wear masks? Are they doing anything once you’re in the facility as far as hand sanitizing going or anything of that nature, for both staff and the general population?
Caller: Yeah, they, yes, we’re required to wear facemasks out. Once we’re outside of our living quarters like when we’re in the dayroom I’m wearing a facemask, when I go to yard, I’m supposed to wear a facemask, when I go to chow stuff like that, medical.
But other than that, when I’m in my cubicle, I cannot, I don’t have to wear it. But I do anyways. And they do provide us with hand sanitizer but it’s just one like one. They have a supply of them. Everybody uses it, but sometimes it’s hard to get a refill.
UCI: Do you see staff also adhering to wearing masks and doing things of that nature?
Caller: Yeah. For the most part, yes, but you get some of them that come from another yard like right now there’s two other yards that are infected, have an outbreak and they’ve got two buildings locked down. And those officers will sometimes do overtime shifts on our building and they won’t be wearing facemasks and stuff. Instead, they’ll be talking right there, coughing everywhere you know it’s crazy. But then they get mad at us cause we don’t wear our facemasks. Sometimes we forget and they’ll start yelling at us. But when we tell them something they you know they just get mad.
UCI: So, it’s almost a double standard if you will. And how has this affected you, you know as far as being able to see your family? Do you tell your family what’s going on? Do you keep it sort of private? Did they know that you had gotten sick?
Caller: Yes, a couple of my family members know that I got sick. And but they don’t you know I don’t really, they don’t really understand what happens behind bars right. They don’t really understand what happens here or how everything goes.
So, they’re just like you know get better. Hopefully you get better you know cause that’s all they know. They don’t really understand what happens right here inside the prison, you know. They don’t understand the procedures, none of that. They just ask me like oh do they give you medication, do they take you to the hospital, stuff like that.
UCI: Okay very minimal. Yeah, very minimal. How have you been able to cope with everything, I mean I know that there’s still some underlying you know conditions because you did get sick. And have you been able to do anything to help alleviate you both, you know, mentally and physically?
Caller: Yeah. I mean, personally, yeah. I’m, I’ve been down for a minute, so I learned how to adapt you know to survive but it’s like I read books and stuff like that. You know I keep myself busy. Today I tried working out, but I couldn’t. I stopped half ways because I was out of breath already.
Excuse me. Like right now I’m running out of breath just talking, it gets, you know. And I was fine before. Now it’s like, man, sometimes it’s hard to breathe. I wake up in the middle of the night like trying to catch my breath like if I was running or something.
UCI: Do you, did they do, I mean, do you have follow up appointments once you’ve tested positive cause you know for a lot of people there are factors that come into play like you’re saying you can’t breathe as easily. Did they have any follow-up appointments or is it kind of I mean did you ever see a doctor to, once you tested positive?
Caller: Yeah, when they had us in the isolation building or in the quarantine building, so called quarantine building. The doctor, the nurses would come and take our vitals and ask us if we had any symptoms.
And the doctor came in 14 days and cleared you to go back to the general population. He would ask me do you have any symptoms, and I would tell him I just, sometimes it’s hard for me to breathe and my head hurts sometimes, and I wake up tired, and I get the body aches. He’s all like oh your vitals are good I’ll let you go. I was like what the hell I’ve been telling you guys for like two weeks already that my body still hurts. It’s going away now but it’s like off and on.
UCI: Yeah, and they you know they do take a while to go away. It doesn’t always go away within 14 days. So it sounds like they as soon as you stop having a cough or a sniffle, they kinda just want to send you on your way essentially?
Caller: Yes. That’s pretty much what it narrows down to. Like oh okay, you’re not coughing or sneezing you’re good. Go ahead, you know.
UCI: Wow. Well, what is, I mean if there’s anything that people could take away from your experience, what would it be? What would you say to someone?
Caller: It’s scary, you know, because here there’s really not much they can do for you. So, it’s a scary thing. It’s, I’ve never seen nothing like this, the whole time I’ve been down. It’s pretty frightening.
UCI: Yeah, there’s a lot of uncertainty and your, and throughout the whole facility right you know I mean your facility didn’t have any outbreaks and then they started, it sounds like they started moving people, not just they started moving not just you know inmates-, but also staff as well, so do you feel that contributed to a lot of it, moving people around?
Caller: Yes. That was a big factor in it, you know. Not keeping us in the yard by ourselves. They just kept bringing people in from different other yards.
