This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Orange County Theo Lacy Jail.
UCI: So what has the COVID situation been like for you?
Caller: At first it was horrible, like they just didn’t understand the prevarity of it and the reason I decided to actually call is ’cause it seems like we’re all out of those tiers, or whatever they call it. It’s like throughout COVID they have given us water bottles with cleaning products, paper towels, and hand sanitizer, and things for sanitary reasons, and they’ve been pretty good about that. But just recently, after we came off of it, they’ve been slacking and stuff. They’ll refill the bottles but they’ll forget the paper towels or some days they won’t come.
It was an everyday like multiple times a day thing, you know. So it’s just that and I mean I’ve been coming in and out on violations so I’ve been getting the whole feel of it since last year. And a real big thing too is everyone- I got the letter and I was talking, you know, and we think it’d be cool if you guys got some way to get in, you know, the newspaper or whatever it was to be able to call your guys’ connections and let them know that we’re the only county that still doesn’t have hot meals.
We’re being served three bagged lunches a day. And the reason being, we’ve been told is ’cause they’ve released so many people that it got to a point where, ’cause I’m obviously in the higher like the gang module or whatever it is, whatever reason that may be that they released everyone so they don’t have people like kitchen workers to be able to cook the food and do what they do with the food to be able to come serve us. Well our- I mean isn’t it easy enough to just be able to make people suitable like reclassify them that aren’t supposedly supposed to be classified so high anyways to be able to work those kitchens and be able to feed us meals.
‘Cause I know after a certain amount of time, and it is actually ACLU work, and it is actually- they are susceptible to a lawsuit, which, we’ve been giving them you know, sympathy, obviously for whatever reasons. Now, it’s obviously just not equal and we have to do something to stand for it. Do you have any questions in like particularly?
UCI: Yeah, I don’t know if you can repeat the last minute, the call kind of cut off, but if you can’t I can ask another question?
Caller: Yeah I was just saying about the food, we’ve been having three hot three- we have no hot meals. We’ve been having three cold meals, three bagged lunches. And it’s horrible, it’s been going on for the whole time basically. Other than that, yeah.
UCI: Yeah so regarding that too, as well, how has the vaccination situation been like?
Caller: Oh yeah, they came around for the vaccinations. Everyone’s just being kind of weary about it because of all the stuff we, ’cause we watch the news. You know 24/7 and that’s all we got so it’s like people are getting blood, couple of people are getting blood clots and then like I guess they bring it out and then they take it away.
So we don’t really know what to do, we just make sure that, I guess, none of us are sick and we all kind of know how to get through the day feeling well or not well, you know. But they offered it to us.
