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Thread: Covid 19 in prisons

  1. #1
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    Covid 19 in prisons

    11 Angola ‘lifers’ have died of COVID-19 since pandemic began

    BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Eleven Louisiana men who have died of coronavirus since April of this year had one thing in common. They were all serving life sentences at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

    In all, twelve Angola inmates have died of the virus. The twelfth inmate who died was serving a ten-year sentence for molesting a juvenile.

    Hit hard early on the pandemic, the prison has not seen another coronavirus-related death since May 24, records show. In addition to the twelve inmate deaths, 169 other inmates have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began, the Louisiana Department of Corrections reported. Most have since recovered. As of this week, Angola was reporting only four inmates who still had the virus.


    According to autopsy and prison records reviewed by WAFB-TV, the Angola inmates who have died of coronavirus include:

    MEYERS, LLOYD Age 69, Aggravated Rape committed on 2-23-1981. Sentenced to life in prison on 11-9-91. Lafayette Parish.
    CARPENTER, LARRY Age 77, Molestation of a Juvenile. Offenses occurred on 11-1-13. Sentenced to 10 years in prison on 11-18-15. Washington Parish.
    CANTRELLO, JOHN Age 69, First Degree Murder, committed on 6-25-1977. Sentenced to life in prison on 11-8-1977. Orleans Parish.
    BROOMFIELD, EARL Age 78, 2nd Degree Murder. Offense occurred on 8-17-1980. Sentenced to life in prison on 5-27-82. Orleans Parish.
    DEWATERS, RAYMOND Age 65, Second Degree Murder. Offense occurred on 4-12-1998. Sentenced to life in prison on 6-16-99. Tangipahoa Parish.
    FRANCIS SR, JAMES R Age 70, Second Degree Murder. Offense occurred on 8-31-08. Sentenced to life in prison on 8-7-12. Lafayette Parish.
    GIDDENS, CLYDE Age 79, Murder (sentenced to life in prison), Arson (sentenced to 10 years), both offenses occurred on 9-19-1963. Sentenced on 10-20-1964. Natchitoches Parish.
    MOSER JR, JOHN L Age 84, Aggravated Rape – (Life in prison) and Aggravated Crime Against Nature (15 years, consecutive) Offenses occurred on 11-1-1982. Sentenced on 4-27-1984. Orleans Parish.
    MITCHELL, ALFRED Age 78, 2nd Degree Murder. Offense occurred on 1-3-1989. Sentenced to life in prison on 12-14-1989. Orleans Parish.
    PERKINS, HERBERT Age 59, Aggravated Rape (life in prison), Aggravated Burglary (30 years, concurrent), and Armed Robbery (25 years, concurrent). Offenses occurred on 7-21-1980. Sentenced on 7-21-1981. East Baton Rouge Parish.
    TASSIN, ROBERT Age 62, Second Degree Murder (sentenced to life in prison) (originally First Degree Murder with the Death Penalty). Offense occurred on 11-6-1986. Sentenced to death on 6-2-1987, and resentenced to life on 11-18-2011. Jefferson Parish.
    WILLIAMS, MICHAEL Age 69, First Degree Murder (sentenced to life in prison) (originally First Degree Murder with the Death Penalty). Offense occurred on 12-6-1974, Aggravated Battery (2 years) offense occurred on 8-25-1978. Sentenced on 4-7-1978 for the murder. Jefferson Parish.

    https://www.wafb.com/2020/07/16/ango...andemic-began/
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    How Long Can You Hide a Dead Body in a Prison Cell?

    If things were a little too quiet in a particular cell in the Texas prison, the guards didn’t notice. If one of the two men locked inside didn’t stand up to be counted—a process that is supposed to happen at least nine times a day—no one reported it. If there was an awful smell, nobody said a word.

    It wasn’t until Cornelius Harper asked prison staff to check on his cellmate that they realized the man was dead. Had been dead for at least three days. Had been choked and beaten so badly he had dried blood and bruises all over his face.

    Given that the prison was on lockdown, there weren’t many suspects. Harper hasn’t been charged, but officials say he killed his cellie and tried to hide it, covering the body with a sheet that rippled in the breeze from the cracked window, mimicking movement.

    Some officials have suggested that Harper may have done more, perhaps positioning and repositioning the body of 26-year-old Silvino Núñez to make it seem as if he were alive in his cell in the Clements Unit in Amarillo. Investigators say Harper has confessed to the murder; he did not respond to letters requesting comment.

    Three months later, officials have released few details, but some things are clear: Harper, 33, had a history of fatal violence and severe mental health problems. At the time of the killing, he was already six years into a life sentence for a triple murder that had nearly gotten him the death penalty. Records show he’d been hearing voices for more than a decade and had a pattern of refusing to take his medication.

    Despite that, Harper—like thousands of other prisoners during the pandemic—was locked almost 24 hours a day in an 8-by-11 cell with Núñez, who was serving a 10-year sentence for stabbing his mother. Like the rest of the men in Clements Unit, Harper and Núñez had no recreation, visits or phone calls, conditions even more restrictive than usual for a maximum-security prison in Texas.

    A prison spokesman confirmed some details about the killing but did not comment on the state’s handling of mentally ill prisoners during long-term lockdowns.

    To experts and prison-reform advocates, the dire consequences are an “I-told-you-so” moment.

    “This was entirely predictable that people were going to be having exacerbated mental health symptoms,” said Michele Deitch, a prisons expert and senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs. “You have people vulnerable with mental health issues and all the stress from the COVID crisis and you’re locking them down and denying them access to their families and support systems.”

    To Núñez’s family, it was a painful and unexpected end. “Silvino Núñez was a grandson, son, brother, cousin and nephew,” Estela Nunez wrote on a GoFundMe page seeking to raise money for a funeral. “Let he or her who is innocent cast the first stone.” She did not respond to a request for comment.

    As the pandemic spread in the spring, prisons began locking down to try to enforce social distancing and avoid major outbreaks. Early on, experts worried that such responses would be particularly hard on mentally ill people behind bars. How hard can be difficult to quantify unless the result is a dead body; Texas’ tracking of less fatal outcomes—such as assaults, use or force, or suicide attempts—has been unreliable.

    In England and Wales, the Guardian reported a rash of prison suicides, five in six days, that sparked alarm among critics there, who attributed the deaths to harsh conditions of indefinite lockdowns.

    In the U.S., Oregon’s federal public defender said she worried one prisoner’s suicide and two other reports of serious self-harm could be due to the continuing stress of the restrictive conditions.

    “The psychological and physical stress of the 14-day lockdown is becoming overwhelming for some of the inmates and detainees,” the public defender, Lisa Hay, told the Oregonian. One man at FCI Sheridan told Hay’s legal team that a fellow prisoner had “slashed himself” because “he could not stand being locked up this long.”

    A few weeks later, Hay’s office filed suit against the prison.

    In Texas, Deputy Inspector General Joe Buttitta, whose office investigates all prison deaths, said he’d seen a slight uptick in suicides amid the pandemic. In one instance, a man jumped off the walkway outside a third-floor cell at an East Texas prison and killed himself; several prisoners wrote The Marshall Project to say that he’d leaped to his death just after finding out he’d tested positive for COVID-19. It’s not clear whether he had pre-existing mental health problems.

    The same cannot be said for Harper, the man officials believe killed his cellmate; his history of mental health struggles was long and publicly documented. Though he did not respond to a letter requesting comment, extensive court records tell some of his life story.

    Born in Abilene, Harper survived a childhood of neglect and abuse, spending his early years with a mother who struggled with drug addiction. His parents lived separately and were never married. At age 7 he moved to Chicago to live with his father. In his teens, Harper began hearing voices, according to court records. He skipped school, and started smoking pot and drinking. Then at 16, he took part in a robbery and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

    After five years he got out on parole, but in early 2011 was arrested near Houston after authorities said he killed his cousin, his cousin’s pregnant girlfriend and her unborn child. Prosecutors alleged the murders all stemmed from a dispute over money and a car, but Harper maintained his innocence and took the case to trial.

    While waiting in the county jail for his day in court, Harper tried strangling himself. He sometimes refused to take medication for fear of the side effects and told an expert tasked with ting him that he still heard voices and had tried to kill himself nine times.

    Despite questions about his competency, a jury found him guilty of capital murder in 2014. But the jurors decided there were enough mitigating factors that he shouldn’t be put to death, so he was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

    At the time of the slaying, the 3,800-man prison where he was held was severely understaffed; roughly half of the corrections-officer positions sat vacant at the end of April. The unit was on lock-down by April 8, and five days later Harper told prison staff to check on his cellmate.

    They found Núñez dead in his bunk. It’s not clear how his death went unnoticed, but the warden recommended firing four officers. As of early July, three were still employed by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, state records show.

    “Security rounds are a must and all staff should be doing them but at the same time TDCJ needs to make sure they have proper staffing levels,” said Jeff Ormsby, a union leader for state prison employees in Texas. Officials said Wednesday that for the first time in recent memory the agency has more than 5,000 guard vacancies, out of almost 26,000 positions. The agency is short an additional 1,000 correction officers due to quarantine.

    “When you’re working people 16 to 20 hours a day, they take shortcuts,” Ormsby continued. “Dealing with any inmates can be difficult, but mentally ill inmates even more so. But dealing with mentally ill inmates when you’re short-staffed and tired is even worse.”

    To some prisoners, the incident highlights how serious the unit’s staffing problems are, and how little concern some officers seem to have for the people they’re guarding.

    To others, it highlights the recurring nightmare of being locked in a tiny, uncooled cell with someone in the throes of a mental health crisis.

    It’s almost impossible to get your cell changed, one man told me. “You try to explain, ‘Look, man, this guy’s a psych patient. He’s on pills. He’s seeing things. He’s hearing things. He’s a cutter.’ Whatever the case may be, you’re going to end up having to either have a fight with a guy or he’s going to have to kill you or you’re going to have to kill him.”

    https://www.texasobserver.org/how-lo...a-prison-cell/
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    Two more inmates die in Kentucky state prisons, bringing COVID-19 death toll to eight

    Two more inmates have died in recent days after testing positive for COVID-19 at Kentucky’s 13 state prisons, bringing the death toll to eight as of Monday night.

    Since March, 805 state inmates — or 7.2 percent of the prisons’ population — have been infected with the novel coronavirus, as have 117 prison employees. On Monday, the Kentucky Department of Corrections confirmed 373 active inmate cases and 48 active staff cases.

    So far, there have been four inmate deaths at the Kentucky State Reformatory in Oldham County, three inmate deaths at the Green River Correctional Complex in Muhlenberg County and one inmate death at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Lyon County.

    Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration has declined to identify inmates dying in its custody during the pandemic.

    Major COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred in recent months at three state prisons: the Kentucky State Reformatory, the Green River Correctional Complex and the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Shelby County.

    A fourth outbreak could be looming. As of Monday, 12 inmates and eight staff were infected at Northpoint Training Center, a medium-security, 551-acre complex in Boyle County that houses 1,113 men.

    A federal lawsuit filed by inmates at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women, where 234 inmates have been infected, alleges the Department of Corrections responded slowly and clumsily to the coronavirus.

    The female inmates say inadequate cleaning, masking and social distancing have allowed the virus to race around inside prison walls, putting their lives unnecessarily at risk. For instance, they say, KCIW’s maximum security unit has no air conditioning. When temperatures soar into the 90s this summer, inmates crowd into the one trailer with an air conditioner unit, so “there is no room to move anywhere without being in someone’s face.”

    “I feel like since the COVID outbreak, I am an inmate that’s sitting on Death Row,” one of the plaintiffs, Jerahco Walls, 31, testified at a hearing.

    “Every day is just a question of, am I going to contract the COVID today and am I going to be alive tomorrow? My biggest fear is not being able to go home to my children and not being able to be there for them,” Walls said.

    In their response to the suit, state corrections officials say they moved swiftly last spring to protect inmates from COVID-19. Outside visitation was canceled and inmate transfers between facilities mostly were halted, officials said, while masks and additional cleaning materials were distributed throughout the prisons.

    “I have consulted with the Kentucky Department of Public Health for expert advice on providing a safe environment for inmates,” Corrections Commissioner Cookie Crews said in a June 26 deposition.

    Since Crews gave her deposition, infections have quadrupled at the women’s prison.

    Last month, the ACLU of Kentucky wrote a letter urging Crews to test all state inmates in every prison for the coronavirus in order to get ahead of the next outbreak.

    Instead, the department has waited until COVID-19 outbreaks were underway to begin mass testing at Green River and KCIW. Only then were prison officials able to segregate inmates into different housing units based on whether they had tested positive or negative or had been exposed to someone who tested positive.

    Apart from Kentucky’s state prisons, seven inmates have died and at least 337 inmates and 10 employees have been infected during a COVID-19 outbreak at the Federal Medical Center, a federal prison on Leestown Road in Lexington. But that outbreak appears to have mostly abated, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

    There also has been a smaller outbreak, with no deaths reported, at the federal prison in Clay County, with 45 inmates and seven staff infected, according to the Bureau of Prisons. One inmate has recovered at the Federal Correctional Institution-Manchester, officials say.

    https://www.kentucky.com/news/corona...244540197.html
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    Protesters chained to governor's home as prison deaths mount

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Demonstrators chaining themselves to a fence outside Gov. Gavin Newsom’s home called for mass prison releases and an end to immigration transfers because of the coronavirus pandemic.

    Monday's protest came as deaths mounted at a San Francisco Bay Area prison where another condemned inmate died over the weekend.

    The California Highway Patrol cut the chains linking protesters to the gate of Newsom's residence in suburban Sacramento after about two hours.

    Also, on Monday more than 100 University of California, San Francisco doctors were among 750 people signing a statement delivered to Newsom calling for more prison releases.

    Newsom says such mass releases would risk leaving thousands of parolees homeless.

    https://kmph.com/news/local/proteste...n-deaths-mount
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    23 Ohio death row inmates test positive for COVID-19

    By Andrew Welsh-Huggins
    Associated Press

    COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — More than 20 Ohio death row inmates have tested positive for COVID-19 in an outbreak flaring up just this past week, The Associated Press has learned.

    The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction confirmed the first case to the AP on July 24 but by Friday said the number had jumped to 23.

    Thirteen of those inmates were tested based on their symptoms and 10 were asymptomatic and tested through contract tracing, said prisons spokesperson JoEllen Smith.

    Medical staff are monitoring the inmates, who are being quarantined and isolated under the prison system's coronavirus policy, Smith said.

    The inmates are all housed at Chillicothe Correctional Institution in southern Ohio, where the state's death row is based. All inmates there undergo daily symptom screening, Smith said.

    Ohio has about 140 death row inmates, most housed at the Chillicothe prison. No executions are scheduled for this year as the state struggles to find drugs for its lethal injection process.

    Ohio's prison system is one of the hardest-hit in the country, with more than 5,200 inmates testing positive as of Thursday. In addition, 88 inmates have died from confirmed or probable cases of the coronavirus.

    Virtually all prisons have cases, but the majority have been at Marion Correctional Institution in north-central Ohio and Pickaway Correctional Institution in central Ohio, which has a medical wing.

    Nearly 1,000 prison system staff members have also tested positive, including the agency director, Annette Chambers-Smith, who announced her diagnosis last week. She is quarantining at home. Five staff members have died.

    In Arizona, at least eight death row prisoners have tested positive for COVID-19, including Alfonso Salazar, who died in April from complications of COVID-19, said attorney Dale Baich, who leads death penalty appeals in the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Arizona. Baich confirmed the cases in his role as a lawyer representing the inmates.

    The Arizona prisons department declined comment, citing the confidentiality of inmate medical records.

    In California, following an outbreak at San Quentin State Prison, at least nine death row inmates have died following positive COVID-19 tests, with a tenth death suspected, according to state Department of Correction and Marin County Coroner's Office records.

    In Texas, death row inmates have sued over the state’s coronavirus prison measures. Earlier this month in Tennessee, a death row inmate received a rare temporary reprieve from Gov. Bill Lee after the Republican announced the execution would not take place this year because of the challenges and disruptions caused by the coronavirus.

    https://www.krgv.com/news/23-ohio-de...e-for-covid-19
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    ‘Catastrophe’: How California’s worst coronavirus outbreak burst from San Quentin into their home in San Jose

    Veteran prison guard who brought home deadly virus, infecting his family, now in fight for his life

    By Julia Prodis Sulek
    The Mercury News

    After every grueling workday, often double shifts guarding prisoners at San Quentin, 55-year-old Sgt. Gilbert Polanco would drive the hour-and-a-half home to San Jose, strip off his khaki uniform in the foyer and head straight to the shower.He was desperately trying not to bring the killer coronavirus home from California’s Death Row.

    His wife, Patricia, so worried these days that she could barely sleep, tossed his clothes into the quick wash cycle each night, no matter the hour — on hot with a splash of vinegar.

    “He would say, ‘I’m scared. It’s growing,’” she said of the virus that was spreading through the notorious 168-year-old prison. “‘We’re doing everything to keep it contained, but it’s impossible.’"

    Then on the last Friday night in June, Gilbert came home sick. Within days, he had infected both Patricia and their 22-year-old daughter, Selena, extending the reach of a tragedy that had started a month earlier with a colossal mistake by prison officials: an inmate transfer that would unleash the deadly virus on a destructive path through at least five California prisons that spanned the state, exploding in San Quentin into what may be the largest outbreak anywhere in the U.S.

    "There’s no end to the downstream impacts of what, quite frankly, was the worst prison screw-up in state history,” said state Assemblyman Marc Levine who represents the Marin County area that includes San Quentin.In the days after the arrival of the five-bus caravan from a state prison in the Southern California city of Chino, not only did the virus sweep through San Quentin’s 1930s-era Badger unit to its notorious Death Row, it eventually escaped the prison walls with veteran guards like Gilbert Polanco and found its way into a green-trimmed house in San Jose, now marked with a hand-drawn warning taped to the front door: “Please… No Visitors.”

    In less than two months, 19 inmates have died, including at least eight on Death Row, more than half the number of condemned killers executed here in four decades. The official number of prisoners infected has reached 2,172— about two-thirds of the prison population — but many refused to be tested.

    And alongside the prisoners plagued by a pandemic in a poorly ventilated germ-ridden lockup are the 258 prison guards and other staff who got sick too — and ultimately brought it home.

    "To me, it’s a catastrophe,” said Patricia Polanco, who along with her daughter has recovered from COVID-19 but is on edge every time the phone rings.More than a month after coming home sick, Gilbert Polanco is so ill that doctors at Kaiser San Jose hospital have twice called to say he might not make it through the night. He is breathing on a ventilator and lying prone to relieve the pressure on his lungs. His kidneys are failing and he went through his seventh round of dialysis on Thursday.

    “Why would they let this happen?” Patricia said, choking back tears. “If they were doing their job, they would have known this would be dangerous."

    ‘Loved by San Quentin family’

    The ivory fortress perched on the northern edge of San Francisco Bay is a place of lore and legend that has housed some of the most violent killers through the decades, from Charles Manson to Scott Peterson, who remains on Death Row for murdering his pregnant wife and unborn son.

    Sgt. Polanco was just 21 when he started working at San Quentin. And for a decade, he and his family would literally call it home. In 1993, the couple moved to “San Quentin Village,” a neighborhood inside the prison’s main gate, when their son, Vincent, was two months old. Selena was born four years later. When Vincent learned to ride his bike on the neighborhood’s Main Street, the children of the other guards held a parade to celebrate. Patricia followed in her car honking all the way.

    “My heart’s there,” said Vincent, now 26, an Army private first class who came home from South Korea when he learned his father was near death. “You felt loved by the San Quentin family.”

    The Polancos keep a favorite photograph of Vincent when he was 3, a shaggy-haired boy looking out across the hillside to San Quentin’s Tower 1, waiting for his father to come home.

    After more than three decades, Gilbert Polanco had plans to retire next year, continue volunteering as a football coach at San Jose’s Lincoln High School, where his two children graduated, and take the family on a deep sea fishing trip to Alaska.

    “You would think that this place would show him the same love and respect he’s shown for them,” Vincent said. “You have to look at the leadership and say, ‘What are you doing?’”

    ‘Brutal errors’


    The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation still doesn’t have a good answer.

    “Someone in CDCR believed that the oldest prison in our state, antiquated, could be an appropriate place to transfer prisoners during a pandemic,” said Levine, a Democrat. “These were brutal errors.”

    He blames J. Clark Kelso, the federal-court appointed receiver who oversees medical care in the state prisons, who approved the transfer — but later acknowledged necessary precautions were not in place.

    On May 30, five silver buses left the California Institution for Men in Chino east of Los Angeles. They were supposed to be life rafts of sorts, sending 121 aging, infirm prisoners away from a coronavirus outbreak, which had infected 600 and killed nine, to a safe haven prison that was coronavirus free. Over the previous two days, buses from Chino had already unloaded 66 prisoners at Corcoran state prison in the Central Valley.

    Each Chino prisoner had tested negative for COVID-19 before they were cleared to make the transfers north. There was only one problem: some of them hadn’t been tested in three weeks.

    When the shackled prisoners arrived at San Quentin after an eight-hour bus ride that Saturday afternoon, a crew of guards quickly spotted trouble.

    “They showed up and San Quentin exploded,” said Sgt. Eddie Mann, a veteran correctional officer and friend of Polanco’s who also caught the COVID-19 virus and brought it home to his wife. “The virus would have showed up sooner or later but not like this. It’s like they just opened the door and said, ‘Hey, see if you guys can survive.'”

    Virus rains down

    As they disembarked the bus in their standard-issue red paper suits, some using walkers, several prisoners from a couple of buses complained of coughs and fevers.

    The sick Chino inmates were immediately quarantined in San Quentin’s “Adjustment Center” — one of the few units with solid doors that houses some of the most violent prisoners on Death Row.

    Within days, however, 25 inmates from the Chino transfer would test positive. By then, the rest of the transferred inmates, many of whom had been breathing in the silent plague all the way up Interstate 5, were confined in the fifth tier of San Quentin’s Badger unit. Cells up there are like the ones in old movies, with open bars that face catwalks. Once those inmates started coughing, the virus rained down on the crowded floors below.

    “It was a fiasco, to be nice about it,” said Mann, who was hospitalized with COVID before returning with oxygen tanks to his Vacaville home.

    Realizing the disaster they had wrought, state prison leaders on June 4 stopped all transfers from Chino. But four days later, four prisoners from San Quentin — who had tested negative within the prior week — were boarding a bus to a state prison in Susanville. Within two weeks, three of them tested positive and the virus quickly spread to more than 200 inmates at the California Correctional Center in Lassen County, then across town to the High
    Desert state prison when a Susanville inmate was moved there.

    By then, the virus was quickly spiraling out of control at San Quentin. On June 19, 500 inmates were sick. Days later, that number had doubled and sick inmates were moved back to Badger, guards say.

    “They sent them to us, thinking they were going to be clean … then bam,” Mann said. “You’re thinking in the back of your mind, who’s running the game here?"

    'My gosh, I’m going to get this'

    In at least one case, an inmate who tested positive for the virus was housed in the same small cell as one who hadn’t, according to that inmate’s wife.

    “He was really distraught over it,” said Shannon Leyba, wife of inmate Larry Leyba. “The cells are tiny, originally built as a one-man cell. He said they kept coming back and checking his cellmate’s temperature all the time and my husband was sitting there saying “My gosh, I’m going to get this.’”

    Sure enough, he did. When Leyba ultimately tested positive, she said, he was transferred to a makeshift sick ward in the prison’s old furniture factory. His symptoms, she said, have been mild.

    Her 51-year-old husband has been incarcerated at a number of prisons through the years — he’s in San Quentin for making threats at a bar — but told her he’s never experienced worse conditions.

    “He would say you can just hear people in pain and screaming,” she said. “Every 10 minutes it’s ‘man down’ and he was really waiting for it to be him next.”

    For two months, the prison has echoed with alerts that blare for minutes at a time as guards rush to inmates in crisis. So many ambulances were summoned in a single day that the prison nearly ran out of chase vehicles that follow ambulances to guard the inmates at the hospital, guards say.

    San Rafael residents, including Assemblyman Levine, who lived between the prison and Marin General Hospital, were awakened by the sirens.

    “It was constant during the first couple of weeks,” he said. “They would hear that day and night."

    Extra shifts, 16-hour days

    From early on, guards handling stricken inmates were suited up with gloves, masks and blue gowns over their uniforms.

    But there were so few N-95 masks in the early weeks that prisoners made cloth masks, white ones for guards and grey ones for themselves.

    And the virus continued to spread. At one point, when most of the kitchen staff fell ill, the kitchen was closed and catered meals brought in.

    As more and more guards called in sick, Sgt. Polanco picked up extra shifts to help out, sometimes working 80 hours in a single week, his wife said. He spent some of his last days on the job guarding sick inmates at the hospital.

    Even after 16-hour days, Polanco would drive all the way home each night, across the Richmond-San Rafael bridge and down Interstate 880, to his hometown of San Jose.

    Not only would Patricia worry he might fall asleep at the wheel, but with his high blood pressure and diabetes, he was especially vulnerable to the virus.

    Exhausted, he would often unload his frustrations about the decisions that led to the outbreak — and little effort to stop it. He also groused about celebrities who often traipsed through before the pandemic, including Kim
    Kardashian who visited Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper last year and tweeted out a photo.

    Selena remembers her father saying: “Where’s everyone famous now who wanted a tour to help the prisoners?”

    On Sunday, prison advocates are planning their fourth demonstration outside the San Quentin gates to denounce the handling of what they call the “new death penalty” of coronavirus. On July 27, after the last two inmate coronavirus deaths, protesters chained themselves to the fence outside Newsom’s house near Sacramento.

    In one of his many coronavirus news conferences, Newsom acknowledged the tragic failures at San Quentin as infections soared in early July and the state prison system’s top medical officer was removed.

    “It has been incredibly frustrating,” Newsom said of the bungled inmate transfer. “That decision created the chain of events that we are now addressing and dealing with. I’m not here to sugarcoat that, I’m not here to scapegoat that.

    “All of us are now accountable to address this issue and doing so in a forthright manner."

    Cough starts on Father’s Day

    In their scramble to contain the outbreak, state officials built a tent city at San Quentin for sick inmates and increased testing — however, only 30% have been tested in the last two weeks.

    Hundreds of inmates have been released early on parole to ease chronic overcrowding and attempt social distancing, sparking concerns the virus may be traveling into the community with them. For now, the worst of the crisis appears over; infections are down from 1,637 in early July to 229 on Friday.

    None of those measures, however, protected Sgt. Polanco, who is the sickest of the San Quentin guards. He started coughing on June 21, Father’s Day. He blamed allergies.

    His wife still feels guilty that she didn’t insist he see a doctor right away. “I should have dragged him,” she said.

    By the end of the week, he was too exhausted to go to work, so Patricia called the doctor. Five days later, he was admitted to Kaiser, where he’s been ever since.

    The family said they can’t help but feel betrayed by the prison system that seemed to show such little regard for the guards as well as the prisoners. “I want accountability,” Selena said.

    “We all do,” Patricia said.

    As mother and daughter endured their own battles with the virus — Selena had never felt sicker — they were inundated with calls and messages and food deliveries from their “San Quentin family.” Even a few inmates asked guards to pass along well wishes.

    The family isn’t used to being on the receiving end of so much help. Polanco was usually the giver, whether gathering supplies for victims of the Santa Rosa wildfires or organizing fishing derbies for his fellow officers.

    “He’s our rock,” his son, Vincent, said, “and now we have to be the rock for him.”

    Over the last week, doctors have been preparing the family for the worst. Patricia can’t sleep.

    “I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I’m so exhausted,” she said. “But my focus now is on my husband. I hope to God he comes home to us."

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/08/01/from-san-quentin-to-san-jose-how-californias-worst-coronavirus-outbreak-burst-from-death-row-to-the-south-bay/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  7. #7
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    24th San Quentin inmate dies of COVID-19 as mystery shrouds most IDs

    SAN QUENTIN, Calif. - The 24th incarcerated person at San Quentin has died of coronavirus, the California Department of Corrections said on Friday, marking the 52nd such prisoner death in California since the virus outbreak began.

    The person died Thursday and no additional information will be given out "to protect individual medical privacy," the agency said.

    However, the Department of Corrections has been releasing the names, pictures and brief criminal histories of incarcerated people who are on Death Row, whom they refer to as "condemned."

    When asked why that is, prison spokeswoman Dana Simas said in an email: "CDCR has, for decades, issued a press release in the event a condemned inmate dies within our custody, regardless of COVID. You can see the list of condemned inmates who have died within our custody here. We won’t be providing any further information on those not identified as condemned. Thank you."

    But death reports in California are public and KTVU is trying to learn the names of all the prisoners who have died of coronavirus through government channels as well as by reaching out to family members and friends.

    But the task is difficult.

    In Marin County, just four of the 23 San Quentin coronavirus cases were overseen at the coroner's office there, according to Sheriff Chief Deputy Roger Fielding. It's unclear where the most current death will be investigated.

    The rest of the incarcerated San Quentin people died at hospitals in other counties, so the coroners in Alameda County, San Mate and San Francisco counties are reviewing their deaths. KTVU has not yet been able to track down any of these death reports.

    More than 20 prisoners who were held at the Correctional Institution for Men in Chino have also died of COVID-19. KTVU reached out to the San Bernardino County coroner's office, but a spokeswoman for the sheriff there said the identities are not made public unless the requester knows the name first.

    This week, KTVU filed a Public Records Request with CDCR to make public the names, ages, and cities of residence of all the California prisoners who have died of coronavirus. But that request has not yet been completed.

    https://www.ktvu.com/news/24th-san-q...rouds-most-ids
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    1st San Quentin guard, 4th death row inmate from Sacramento dies from COVID-19

    California correctional officials announced two deaths related to a massive coronavirus outbreak at San Quentin State Prison: The first prison guard to die of COVID-19 and the fourth inmate condemned from Sacramento County to die since early July.

    The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said Sgt. Gilbert Polanco, an Army veteran and guard at the facility since 1988, had died. He had been hospitalized since July 3 with the virus. In total, 261 workers at San Quentin have been infected with COVID-19, but Polanco’s death was the first among the Marin County facility’s staff.

    “Sergeant Gilbert Polanco is an example of the best of CDCR and his passing deeply saddens us all,” CDCR Secretary Ralph Diaz said in a statement Sunday. “His dedication to public service will not be forgotten.”

    Since the first confirmed cases of COVID-19 were identified earlier this year, more than 1,975 prison staff within CDCR have contracted the virus. While 928 have recovered, CDCR’s tally notes, Palanco was the ninth CDCR employee to succumb to the virus.

    Acting San Quentin Warden Ron Broomfield said “our hearts are broken” over the 55-year-old’s death.

    “Sgt. Gilbert Polanco demonstrated unwavering commitment and bravery as a peace officer working the frontline every day during this devastating pandemic,” Broomfield said in a statement. “His memory is carried on in the hearts of all the men and women who continue to battle this deadly virus at San Quentin. We mourn together with his family and pray for their peace and comfort in the midst of their immeasurable loss.”

    The Polanco family, including his son Vincent, recently home from a U.S. Army station in South Korea, told The Mercury News they had been hopeful for his recovery within the last few days. Doctors had started a plasma treatment and weaned him off steroids after he was intubated for several weeks. For the 1st time in 10 days, they were able to position him on his back, Polanco’s wife, Patricia Polanco, told The Mercury News.

    But just before dawn Sunday morning, “his heart just stopped,” Selena Polanco, his 22-year-old daughter, told The Mercury News.

    A GoFundMe campaign for Polanco, a San Jose native, and his family has raised nearly $70,000.

    Inmates with Sacramento ties to die from the coronavirus

    Also on Sunday, San Quentin inmate Pedro Arias, 58, died at an outside hospital from “what appears to be complications related to COVID-19,” the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced. Officials said a coroner will further determine the cause.

    Arias is the 25th inmate there to die from COVID-19 complications amid an outbreak linked to the May transfer of 121 inmates from the California Institution for Men in Chino where an outbreak had taken hold. Some 25 tested positive for the virus after they arrived at San Quentin on May 30 and it spread from there. Weeks later, 3 inmates moved from San Quentin to California Correctional Center in Susanville likely sparking an outbreak there.

    According to CDCR officials, Arias was sentenced to death in Sacramento County on Feb. 22, 1990, for 1st-degree murder and 2nd-degree robbery while armed with a firearm. He was also sentenced to life without parole for kidnapping for ransom/extortion, penetration with a foreign object, attempted sodomy, lewd and lascivious acts on a child under 14, sodomy of a child under 14, 2 counts of forcible rape, 2nd-degree robbery and enhancements for the use of a firearm.

    Arias, then 24, stabbed Herbert John Waltrip Jr., 22, while robbing a convenience store at 44th Street and Fruitridge Road on May 23, 1987. Waltrip, who worked at the store, died during emergency surgery.

    13 days later, Arias, who lived on Lemon Hill Avenue, rammed the fender of a car on Highway 50, then kidnapped the driver at gunpoint when she stopped to exchange information with him. For about three hours, he drove with her around Sacramento and Yolo counties, alternately assaulting her and collecting cash from her accounts, according to previous Bee reporting.

    The victim escaped by running into a hardware store as Arias stood in line at an ATM at Mack Road and Franklin Boulevard. Arias escaped in a stolen truck but was arrested after he rolled the truck over.

    After a trial that included outbursts including him ripping off his clothes in the courtroom, Arias offered a statement of remorse at sentencing, but only after offering his opinion that the death penalty is not a deterrent to murder and is a cruel and unusual punishment because of the waiting time between sentencing and execution. Arias spent 30 years on death row, which was halted in 2019 by Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    “I never intended to kill that man and I wish I never, never did that. The only person I owe an apology to is John Waltrip, and someday maybe I’ll be able to do that,” Arias said.

    The number of inmates condemned is now 713.

    Arias’ death follows 3 others on death row who were convicted in Sacramento County:

    - Manuel Machado Alvarez, 59, died July 3. He was convicted more than 30 years ago for a May 1987 spree over 4 days in which he raped an 38-year-old woman, fatally stabbed a 35-year-old Sacramento Police Department identification technician while trying to rob him and injured a 78-year-old while stealing her car.

    Alvarez, a native of Cuba, didn’t bat an eye as he was sentenced to death by Superior Court Judge Darrel W. Lewis for the death of Allen Ray Birkman at an ATM, according to previous Sacramento Bee reporting.

    At the time of the crimes, Alvarez, who was 26, had been out on parole for after serving time for killing 1 man and stabbing another through the throat during a knife attack in Los Angeles County on Dec. 27, 1981. During his incarceration at trial, Alvarez also attacked 2 inmates at the Sacramento County Main Jail.

    - Jeffrey Jay Hawkins, 64, died July 15. He was sentenced to death Jan. 31, 1990, after being convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder with the use of a gun, and attempted 1st-degree murder with the use of a gun inflicting great bodily injury.

    Hawkins had 7 prior felony convictions when he was convicted of killing John Robert Hedlund, 42, and Herman Alfonzo Hicks Jr., 39, in incidents 6 days apart.

    - Troy Adam Ashmus, 58, died July 20. He had been on death row at San Quentin State Prison since September 1986 after he was convicted for the murder of a 7-year-old girl, according to Sacramento Bee archives.

    He had already been serving a 6-year sentence for assault to commit a sex crime when prosecutors charged him with the 1984 slaying of Marcella Davis after attacking her at Santa Anita Park, raping her and then stuffing 2 wadded up plastic bags down her throat.

    The then-22-year-old carnival worker lured the girl from the pond at Howe Avenue Park by offering to give her a baby duck. Earlier that same day, he attacked a jogger and dragged her into some bushes before fleeing when 2 men happened upon the scene.

    Virus in state prison system

    Among the more than 98,000 men and women incarcerated in state prisons in California as of Sunday, 8,780 have tested positive for the virus, including 52 who have died. More than 1,000 of those infections have been detected within the past 2 weeks.

    The prison system reports that more than 1,300 inmates statewide currently have active COVID-19 infections, while more than 7,000 have recovered. Additionally, more than 300 inmates have been released from prison after fulfilling their sentence while still categorized with an active coronavirus infection.

    Those releases don’t count thousands of other inmates released from custody to decompress the prison population. Under an initial round of releases in April, about 3,500 inmates who were within 60 days of their scheduled release — and not serving time for a violent crime — were set free.

    In July, the system made additional releases. That included about 2,100 inmates whose awards of time off for good behavior moved up their release dates into July and 4,800 eligible inmates with six months or less left to serve.

    The current statewide prison system population is down by more than 16,300 since March 11.

    (source: The Sacramento Bee)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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