This story was told by a person incarcerated at Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail.
UCI: Yeah, I see. I wanted to just ask you about if the facility had mentioned to you about the new vaccine mandate for staff at all California facilities? Have you heard about that?
Caller: Yes, I have. And that’s one thing that, um, that kind of bothers me with the prison because, like I say, I been incarcerated for the past 21 years, and to see something, a virus, a COVID virus, this started in society, and for them to treat us in prison like we are the ones that that has started it, it’s kind of wrong.
You have officers that leave this facility every day. You have staff members, you have nurses, officers, everything, a lot of people leave this prison facility, and they go home, do whatever they do, and then they come back. That’s the only reason why it’s in jails and prison is because of the staff and the officers is bringing it in. And then they look at us like we’re the ones that’s infecting them.
And you tell me where it’s – you forcing me to have to take the vaccine in order to return back to prison, but you’re not even forcing all your own officers, enforcing the same rules for your own officers to be vaccinated before they come onto the facility.
So it’s kind of, like, it’s hard for me to understand that. I understand that I’m incarcerated, you know, I have no rights, I’m the lowest of the low. Okay. I get that. But at the same time, it’s like, why your officers ain’t being judged in the same way if they got to do something with public safety?
And this is something that – and your officers are the ones that go home every day. We don’t know what they do when they’re off shift. We don’t know where they go, we don’t know what protocols they following, but then they get to come back the next day and they’re not being forced to be vaccinated, so I feel like that’s kind of wrong.
