This story was told by a person incarcerated at New Folsom.
UCI: What has the COVID situation been like at your facility?
Caller: It’s out of control. And that’s the purpose of my call right now.
UCI: What do you mean by out of control? Can you elaborate?
Caller: Yes. As of right now, say for instance, this is my housing unit that I’m in and the facility has been – all buildings has been infected with the omicron variant. And so, basically we’re supposed to be quarantined 14 days anytime a person is positive within that building.
Okay, since we’ve been on lockdown since, the middle of January that we came off in December and their program, their protocol, is supposed to be where anytime staff come on in the sections, they’re supposed to put on the medical, the medical quarantine protocol gear. Which they don’t do. Medical don’t do it.
Only thing they come in with is the face mask on. And then on top of that, medical quarantine in the prison system, which I got years of being in, and then quarantine in the past before any of this came out, when you have hepatitis or tuberculosis and they do the quarantine, nobody, no inmates are allowed out these cells.
And this is the state emergency quarantine right here so the COs are too lazy to do their job and what they get paid for. They’re allowing the inmate porters to come out, handle the food, pass out the food, serve the food. They’re not supposed to open these doors and they’re opening the cell doors when they supposed to unlock the key and put the food through the tray slot.
They’re opening the doors. COs having the control several times, open the doors and having the inmate porters give you food and stuff. And five inmate porters in this building, within the last month, have been quarantined and sent to the quarantine unit because they go, they were infected by COs that they work with.
And you have four COs within this building have not been able to come to work for two weeks because they have caught it. So the main thing is, is that the quarantine policies, they’re not locking this down for 14 days. It’s just they took five dudes out of this building that tested positive today, but they still ran yard one section at a time.
We’re supposed to be immediately quarantined for 14 days and nobody come out their cells besides to shower. And as you see, I’m on the phone with you right now. Quarantine means no phone calls, no interacting with anybody else, and then they say the distance is six feet.
The next man is talking on the phone next to me, the phones are only about four and a half feet away from each other. So I got my mask on right now, and I disinfect the phone before I got on and the whole time we’ve been quarantined, I don’t use the phone.
But, I think it’s important that I’m using it now because I think it’s important that somebody know that the quarantine policies are not being followed. And then they’re getting paid, to my understanding, they’re getting paid for a large amount of money for inmates being over there in the quarantine building.
