This story was told by a person incarcerated at Chuckawalla.
UCI: Are you able to give a month-by-month recount of the – of how the situation was handled? Do you – do you remember anything else about maybe how it was handled at the beginning, how it’s changed now?
Caller: In the beginning it was crazy. There was just too much moving around.
It’s like putting somebody infected with people that haven’t been tested yet or – or haven’t been exposed. So what they were doing in the beginning was just very careless. You had A yard with confirmed cases and they brought everybody from A yard to B yard, which made no sense because we weren’t even exposed to it until they brought staff and – and other inmates from that yard to – to B yard.
But it seems like everything they do, whether it be medical wise, whether it be movement, or the way they run the certain programs, it’s never the same. CDC switches their mind, you know, from the next minute to the next hour. Nothing is consistent with them.
UCI: Okay. What would you say is the most troubling thing for you right now in regards to the pandemic?
Caller: At times it is stressful. It’s stressful because it doesn’t seem like they know – they don’t know what to do, and at times I feel like they do things on purpose with movement. Nobody really wants to move, nobody really wants to go to quarantine, nobody wants to go to outside hospital because they say we have to quarantine for 14 days before we go to outside medical, go to medical, and then come back and quarantine for another 14 days. Our property gets lost. It’s the movement and the way they – they handle the program here at CVSP that makes it a stressful environment. So not only are you threatening us sometimes, sometimes they don’t – not – not with physical, but, like, with, well, we’re going to move you or you’re going to go ad seg or you’re going to go to quarantine.
Your whole group is going to go to quarantine. That right there is a stressful and it creates a stressful environment. And then we, as inmates, you know, you know, have to deal with the correction officers because it’s not medical. At the end of the day, it’s going to be the correctional officers and it just creates a hostile – hostile environment. So it – it’s the movement that we don’t like. And to keep moving us just because somebody’s sick, it – it creates stress on us.
And then that’s the one thing that we don’t like.
UCI: Okay. So what do you think would make the situation at your facility better?
Caller: You know, that – that’s kind of tough because at any moment – at any moment, somebody could come down real sick and actually, you know, die from it, and it – it has happened. But, you know, they’re in – they’re in – this whole thing right here, you know, it’s just – there’s – there’s really not much they can do.
There – there’s no cure for it, so to be moving us and to say things, you know, things are better like this if we move you guys and you guys, you know, we understand it – it’s an outbreak, there’s a virus, it – it’s deadly, people have died already, but to make things better, I – I mean, I guess stop – stop movement. And whoever is – is positive would – would have to be moved themselves. Instead of moving, you know, a cube which holds eight and move the whole cube out and they move them back, I mean, that’s – I think if it’s just the person that – that is positive or maybe has health issues, focus on that person instead of focusing on eight people.
