This story was told by a person incarcerated at Solano.
Caller: So, walking you back, we’ll go back um, 12 days ago. It’s when everything began to hit a head that I knew of. Before? We were just hearing, uh, of isolated situations of people catching COVID.
We were having sparse cases, uh, from what I saw. Because if you’re not on that yard or in that building, you don’t get, you don’t get to know what’s going on because when this pandemic first took place, for the last six or seven months, they been making sure that buildings stay separated from other buildings. So, if something happens at building 18, I don’t get to get the full gossip of it because I’m not around any guys who are in building 18, unless I go to work.
So that was the only time, what they did to make sure to continue the work, they took all the workers. And they moved them off of D yard to C yard, which is the yard that I’m on and put them in one building, which is building 15.
And then they had a couple workers in 15, a couple in my building. So, um, to answer your question about what was going on in previously, it was sparse breakouts, that I didn’t know that the gravity of the situation because I wasn’t in those yards. But I was hearing that they were having outbreaks, but it was nowhere near as what took place now.
So, what did take place is, you hear about two months ago when they shut down San Quentin, as well as a couple other prisons that I didn’t know anything about, I just knew about San Quentin. Uh, we knew that they were either were gonna have to release these individuals at San Quentin or send them to other prisons.
So we were all excited because there was few of us, such as myself, that, that, that we saw hope that they might let us out instead of, you know, subjecting us to being around, in a crowded environment to where we couldn’t practice social distancing 100 percent of the time.
So, what I think, what end up happening here was, uh, about two months ago, our, uh, the main, uh, came to us and said, “Hey, I just found out, we just had a meeting with the warden, and they’re going to allow guys that were previously affected from other prisons to come to our prison.”
And we told them no, but the warden said, “There’s nothing you can do about it. Um, you going to have to be around someone that previously, you know, had been, um, infected.” So-
We immediately got scared because it’s like, “Oh here we go.” So, the first guy ended up in our building, about a month ago or maybe a month and a half ago. And, uh, I found out through him that yes, he did have COVID-19 and yes, he had caught it twice.
So, with me finding out that a person can catch it twice, we were just like, “Oh my God.” And so, after that, um, here within these last, you know 12, 13 days, it’s when stuff really hit the fan where it had affected me, where I can actually see the, the gravity of the situation because I’m involved. And when I say this is a major breakout, this is a major breakout. Right now.
UCI: Mhm.
Caller: And uh and my, my assessment is- my assessment is they have nowhere to put us. And so, there’s just, um, uh, taking them as they come and just putting us anywhere. Regardless of the conditions.
