This story was told by a person incarcerated at Todd Road Jail.
UCI: What has the COVID situation been like at your facility?
Caller: Well I was here – this is my second run during – my second run at – right, being incarcerated at this jail, this pre-detention jail, right? But when it first started back in 2019 I was there. When it very first started.
So we had – they eliminated visits, they eliminated like they still had store but then they eliminated – made us start wearing masks, but not at first. And then they started giving us – shutting down like our time for going out and they started getting really strict or tight.
You know what I mean? So it was kind of like crappy because we couldn’t have visits anymore and people were having problems coming to drop off money for people who – you know what I mean? For the store and all that. Commissary basically.
So they couldn’t come in person to do it so they had to go through a kiosk type thing or just do it from like a credit card over online which costs more money. So it was kinda like a financial burden as well as a personal burden for me personally.
You know what I mean? Since I couldn’t see anybody visit me. And then they couldn’t have the access with the credit card cause a lot of the person I had didn’t have a card to go on the PayPal type app to give me money. So that was kind of like a hardship.
You know what I mean? So it kinda sucks. At first, yeah. Then you get used to it. And then when they started making you wear masks, they didn’t do that right away. They did that probably I’d say a month into it.
Maybe I’d say maybe two – a month and a half I’d say that, maybe. Right? So, then they would start pressing you, like saying, “Well if you don’t have your mask on, you’re gonna get a major write-up.” And then, or, “If you don’t have it covering your nose or wearing it properly,” I guess, “then you get a write-up, a major.”
And then when you get a major that means you gonna lose privileges such as your commissary which was the only thing active at that time anyway. Or you’re gonna lose your video visits.
But the one good thing that they did have was two, 10 minute free calls on Friday. Okay, but a lot of guys would know how to hustle that because some guys didn’t have people to call so you’d be able to get like maybe – plus your two-10 on Friday’s but then you’d also be able to get somebody else’s who didn’t have anybody to call or were willing not to use that, or utilize that.
So then you’d sometimes have 40 minutes. So it would be all right. And then you could use that for the length of the week. So that was a plus in a way. So it didn’t charge you to call somebody that you – you know, to keep in touch.
So, but I mean as far as them being surly – they’re always sitting surly in there. Even more ammo to be surly and more ammo to take your rights away, and privileges because of the mask situation.
You know? And I mean I’m going on and on but that’s just the gist of what you want, you know – that’s your first question right?
UCI: Thank you for sharing.
Caller: Yeah. And that’s how it was in Ventura County at first, when it very first started. And that video visits – but then, I mean, they just give them more ammo and it was kind of like, it just sucked.
And then when new people would come in, they wouldn’t quarantine them, which they should’ve cause they had an open quad, a tank – that’s what they call them, next to us. So that way when the new people come off the streets, they wouldn’t even quarantine, they would put them in our, my population.
Which would be high – it’s high control, my section. High control, right, so it wouldn’t be general population or protective custody or mental thing – it would be more high control, like a level four type, right?
So they would bring people off the streets and integrate them with us and it’s like dude, you know, really I mean this doesn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t you quarantine them to begin with and then after a couple weeks once you satisfy that they don’t have the corona – or COVID – then bring them into our population?
But they weren’t doing that, you know? So some guys were putting grievances on that. So enough of my [unintelligible].
