This story was told by a person incarcerated at Ironwood.
Caller: The officers are getting I guess frustrated with all the safety precautions they have to take because they’re trying to prevent the spreading. But, you know, their frustration being, you know, put on us the inmate population which is kind of weird. They’ve been, they never stopped searching, you know, like patting us down. Like I go to work and everyday they pat us down without changing their gloves out.
This is the weird part, when you used to go to chow, you would go up to chow and on the way out they would randomly select inmates, pat them down and never change their gloves and pat down the next inmate, pat them down and so on and so on. When I go to work every day they search us, search our clothes, which they got a metal detector and they got screening machines but even on top of that they strip us down to naked, go through our clothes and give it back to us.
And they’re just doing this without even changing their gloves, disregarding the social distancing protocols. You know, of course you have some that try to follow it and some that they just don’t care, they’re just frustrated with the restrictions.
UCI: Do the guards wear masks?
Caller: Excuse me?
UCI: Do the guards wear masks?
Caller: Yeah, right now this whole week they’ve been enforcing it. But, um, for whatever reason I think there’s gonna be an audit so all of them are putting on, they’re getting on their Ps and Qs. But you know, a good majority, I think the other day they came by and I think squad or the investigating unit was taking pictures of officers not with their mask on or, somebody was with them that was taking pictures.
And you know, like I said, the frustration’s just being put on us. One of the frustration I see it is the mask, they’re not wearing the proper mask. They’re just wearing like the sleeve of a shirt, which it looks like to me.
The mask that they’re issue they’re- I haven’t, there’s like the majority of them are just wearing their own, you know personal whatever they like bandanas and stuff like that.
