This story was told by a person incarcerated at Chuckawalla.
UCI: What’s going okay in terms of the management? What’s troubling you or concerning you?
Caller: Well, what has concerned me was the fact that the facility which, I have been on for a couple of years. When the pandemic first hit the prison in March, our facility, which has three buildings on it, stayed negative for at least six months.
Okay. And while the rest of the prison was all, was popped off. I mean, we’re talking every other yard had so many cases, like crazy. You know, we were up in the thousand mark, somewhere around there. And then, we tried to stay, our buildings particularly tried to stay isolated in quarantine, away from everything and everybody.
And then, somehow, someway, I mean I have my theories, but somehow, someway, we ended up getting it over here. We’re not sure if it was from the staff or by them bringing an inmate or two from another yard over here and got us infected. And the next thing you know we all, every single one of us got infected, and became positive.
UCI: Can you tell me what month that started to happen when people started to get sick in your building?
Caller: I’d say around September.
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: Around September. I’m not, you know, I’m not exactly certain, but I want to say around September.
UCI: How are- how have things been since then?
Caller: Since then, I mean, you know, we’ve had, I think we’re up to 11 deaths now at the prison. We’re at probably maybe at 20, 20 to 50, somewhere around there, positives on the other yards.
And everybody’s just asymptomatic now in my yard. I mean, you know we still are demanding to wear masks. But social distancing which they keep announcing all the time is just impossible. Absolutely impossible. This has concerned me from day one.
