This story was told by a person incarcerated at Santa Rita Jail.
UCI: And then, what has the COVID situation been like at your facility?
Caller: At my facility, they are exposing us to it on purpose, so they can say we are on quarantine to stop us from going to court to prolong us from getting released on our court date.
UCI: Mm-hmm. And-
Caller: And they’re doing that here in this facility.
UCI: And what does them exposing you look like?
Caller: It’s the deputies, and the – really more so the deputies and the classification, and the deputies in our housing unit. They run a person that wasn’t – didn’t complete their 14-day cycle of isolation before being moved to any unit, to ensure he is not contagious with the coronavirus. They moved him in here to either massively re-infect us.
We were already on quarantine for the most recent outbreak, where a couple of people came down with it inside of our pod, and they moved him in here to keep it going. And then, when we were off quarantine from it, they still kept pretending they didn’t believe we were off quarantine so they wouldn’t transport us to court.
I went off, and I actually got taken to court three and a half hours later, right across the street from the Santa Rita Jail to the courthouse. It took them three and a half hours to get me there late. Because they were trying to get the hazard pay from being on quarantine and keep people in jail as long as possible by making a mess of their regularly scheduled court date during the pandemic when a lot of people are being released. They wanted to make sure that didn’t happen for as long as possible.
UCI: And have you ever – oh, sorry.
Caller: We have family members now starting to contact Cal/OSHA. Code enforcement in off Clay Street in Oakland to make sure they come in here on them and possibly shut them down. They’ve been doing this for quite some time, but now four people missed court.
After me, after I went, so they can’t lie out of this. So this is been going on for a while, but this is solid proof we have that they’re doing it deliberately.
UCI: And just to clarify, have you ever successfully made it to a court appearance then?
Caller: Yeah, I had to throw the trash can up against the window, and cuss the deputies out, and make a big scene, and call the public defender’s office to let them know I wasn’t in court. Then, ten minutes later they came and got me for court.
UCI: Oh, interesting.
Caller: I was supposed to be there at 8:45 in the morning. They came and got me at 10:30. Almost 11 o’clock, I got there to appear in court.
UCI: And when you do get to go or if they’re going to attempt to, do they provide masks for you?
Caller: Yeah. They provide masks and everything, but the point of it is, they bring people in here in our pods to infect us on purpose so they can quarantine us. And they are doing this all over the jail. That’s why we have so many reported outbreaks in Santa Rita County Jail, ’cause they’re doing it on purpose. Yeah.
UCI: Mm-hmm. And-
Caller: Yeah.
UCI: The staff don’t follow proper protocol for quarantining people around you, do they follow proper protocols for themselves?
Caller: For themselves?
UCI: Mm-hmm.
Caller: Yeah, but not the inmates.
UCI: Okay.
Caller: Because the financial gains for them, if they cause us to miss court, it prolongs us from getting out and keeping us quarantined. So, they have it listed in our unit. I can’t say our unit. Can I say our unit?
UCI: Yeah.
Caller: [Redacted]. They had it on the computer and as if we were quarantined until the 18th of this month. When all actuality, we were off on the 7th of this month, but they had it posted to fool the public to justify them not taking – you see, it was only one pod in six buildings that was on quarantine out of the five other pods in here. So, six pods total, only one was on quarantine.
All the other pods were off. All other five pods were off quarantine, but they weren’t letting us go to court out of the whole building on purpose. They play a little psychological game and they lie and try to deny everything. But they’ve done it, and now, they can’t really get out of it because they got the guy in here.
They moved him in here like that on purpose from a non-quarantine unit, where he could’ve went to court to stop him from going to court – I mean, going to court on his court date, and then load us up for both us and have the same sergeant review it and also conduct our disciplinary rules by violation hearing. He illegally violated all our due process rights.
That’s why we have them in court and they got the approval consent to decree, settlement, approve, but now we are appealing it, because look, what they did, not even a week after it. Hello?
UCI: What is their proper quarantining protocol for someone who does test positive?
Caller: They remove him and then place him in isolation until he is, I guess, clear. Clear from no longer being contagious. But a person that just gets arrested is supposed to stay in isolation for 14 days.
They didn’t do that with this guy. They just moved him in here because after – they assaulted him. They assaulted him and put him in ad seg, and then moved him from ad seg that was not in quarantine, without him being clear of COVID, and put him in our pod while we were on quarantine to make sure he couldn’t go to court.
UCI: Mm-hmm.
Caller: And then they tried that on me. I went off and then after I went to court, they still stopped people going to court out of our pod. And then they punished me for it.
They took my phone privileges, took my video visiting because I had the National Lawyers Guild come and get me a video visit. And I showed them on the screen that they were illegally keeping us locked up in our houses and they have all three class – separate, different classifications out at pod time at the same time. They had me in medium behavioral mental health and protective custody, and it wasn’t pod time, but it was video visiting.
It was his single pod time and the other guy’s video visit, and then me had a video visit at the same time, and they let this guy get eaten up by bed bugs for over three months. And won’t have a professional come in here to sterilize the cell. They just keep moving people and he keeps re-infecting other people, and they get moved, and separated in other pods. That’s what’s been happening.
UCI: And how long did they take away your phone and video privileges after this happened?
Caller: For 30 days, and they were wrong. They were the ones not taking me to court while I was supposed to be there, and they weren’t going to take me there. And they just did it to the guy again that they moved him in here illegally like that. They did it to him again this Thursday.
They didn’t let him go to court again as a punishment. They’re using this behavioral mental health classification. People that aren’t even mentally ill, they’ll pick you out of the main line and put you in behavioral mental health and use this as a means of punishing, because they cannot put us in ad seg anymore.
UCI: And you had mentioned that they’re not properly sanitizing things, do they provide anything like that for you?
Caller: They haven’t been doing it, and now that I have been really pushing the issue, they’re starting to provide alcohol pads. Our pod has been dirty. They haven’t given us – they don’t give us clothing exchanges. Sometimes for over 30 days here.
This is the punish – this is the new admin – this is the new secret undercover Santa Rita Jail administrative segregation punishment unit. We’re in it. It’s not even about, “What it’s supposed to be,” it’s all about punishment here.
We’ve been – they’ve signed an agreement to let us out for two hours in the morning and two hours at night. They refuse to do it. They do everything but what they’re supposed to do.
UCI: Do you ever get-
Caller: They’re using-
UCI: So sorry. Do you ever get to go out?
Caller: Yeah, we get to go out, but we got to fight with them. You know, on things they’re supposed to do.
They’re using the mental health psychiatric state hospital as a means to force people to take the plea bargain. And they’ll have your public defender say, “You’re incompetent to stand trial,” after you get to the point where they feel like you’re gonna go to trial. And they don’t want to spend the money, so they’ll say – he’ll state the belief that you are incompetent to stand trial.
Then, even without the psychs that are supposed to interview you, never end up interviewing you. They just review paper record and determine your incompetency, off of no evidence that you suffered from a mental illness. And then, they involuntarily authorize that you be medicated without you ever having any evidence that you ever suffered from any mental illness or taken psych meds.
They’ll just get you to the hospital and start injecting you with psych medications against your will. That’s what this jail is doing. It’s all about them making money off your incarceration and I’m going to be honest with you.
A lot of it is a racial discrimination and it’s mainly affecting African Americans and Latinos, but mainly African Americans they’re doing this to. Because our jail is predominantly African American cohabitants.
UCI: How would they label you with a mental disability?
Caller: They don’t even – they don’t even – I have never been diagnosed. Nothing. They just chose to. When they came in, they had an agenda.
I’ve been fighting my case for three years. I won’t take their plea bargain. This time when they took me into custody, they put me in a behavioral mental health classification medical orange. And would not let me out because they had planned, if I didn’t take the deal, they would say I am incompetent to stand trial and illegally court-order me to be involuntarily medicated against my will.
Basically they try to chemically castrate me, because I won’t take their plea bargain. They can’t convict me ’cause they – I wasn’t on parole or probation. Even in one of the counties, they claim that I was on. When they came to find out that I wasn’t on either one of them, I was on nothing, so they want me to relieve them of a serious civil liability, and I won’t do it by pleading guilty. And I won’t do it.
Now my punishment is behavioral mental health classification in jail, and them try to fabricate and create a mental health record ’cause I don’t have one to have justification for involuntarily medicate me. I have been refusing COVID tests and temperature checks, ’cause they haven’t been able to transfer me. Now they’re getting ready to have a third psych to come out to try and evaluate me. I’m going to go to that evaluation and to prove that they’re still going to conclude that I am incompetent to stand trial to violate my rights.
Because they want me castrated for not taking the plea bargain and relieving them of this huge civil liability of the CLETS and the CRIMS databases that all California law enforcement use, they believe in it accurately, erroneously errored for over three decades. And they don’t want to change it because they use it to violate our fourth amendment rights to give us additional convictions even when we’re off probation.
It’ll still say that we’re on, even when we’re off parole, it’ll still say we’re on. They leave it like that and they’ve been doing it for 30 years. And my case is evidence to prove that through my preliminary hearing, and they want me to take the plea bargain.
It’s been going on for three years. Now after three years, now, I am incompetent to stand trial.
UCI: Well, we thank you so much for calling in tonight. Is there anything else you would like to share related to your COVID experience?
Caller: Yes that Cal/OSHA needs to shut this place down and thoroughly investigate and come through in here and ask the inmates personally about their experiences, about what these officials have been doing as far as COVID-19. And I guarantee you that they’ll shut it down.
UCI: Well, thank you again so much for calling. If you would like to, we would appreciate you telling your friends and family if they would like to call in. All these stories help contribute to the final cause.
Caller: Okay, and I appreciate your time and I’m glad I was able to give you this testimony so this can be put on the website, so people can know what Santa Rita officials are really doing.
UCI: Mm-hmm.
Caller: They’re financially gaining off our recidivism that they’re creating.
UCI: We so appreciate you calling in, and yeah, it’ll go to the team and edit it and then be able to post it, so thank you so much.
Caller: Okay. Have a good day ma’am.
UCI: You too.
Caller: Bye-bye.
