Oregon Prison Report: Voices from the Inside "It's frustra…

“And you have a lot of officers just saying, 'Tough, can't do anything about it. Deal with it. We're in charge and you're not.'"

[Note: As of 2/8/21 there are a total of 103 positive cases of COVID-19 at SCI, 21 of which are currently active.]

(Testimony from Lane County Mutual Aid's (@eughungerstrike) Correspondence)

Santiam Correctional Institution (SCI) / February 2, 2020.

So on Monday, they gave another mass test of COVID-19, or they offered it again, and this time a larger amount of people for multiple reasons refused the test. A lot of them refused the test because they were pretty sure they have COVID-19 and they don't wanna be shipped out...

... , go to OSP and get locked down. And once again, that situation like every other institution is doing it if you refuse the test they quarantine you for 14 days. I mean that's... You have the right to refuse the test you have a right to refuse any medical...

... you know that's a constitutional right that even prisoners continue to have.

But you don't have a right to continue to put people in danger, you know, especially people who are highly susceptible and could die from it. And when the people refused...

... once again, Santiam kept everybody and did not quarantine the people.

So the second thing that they did was they came through today and they told everybody you know get on your bunks and they went around and told everybody publicly, again, in violation of HIPAA...

... who had tested positive. 8 people from my unit tested positive. And this is what, so, every other institution that I've been to and seen what goes on if you have COVID-19 they immediately take you to a quarantine zone.

They brought people back up into this dorm and told them to roll their stuff up and put them within 2-3 feet of people who had tested negative making these people... they brought COVID people back up to a dorm full of people.

For some reason the tests this time were not the rapid tests, they gave us rapid tests last time.

This time they gave us the 2 day tests, so these people who tested positive have been sitting in out unit for 2 days with COVID-19 spreading it even further...

... and then like 2 guys were from the kitchen. They work in the kitchen.

So rather than going down and grabbing these people and saying "Ok you're COVID-19 positive, we need to quarantine you" they go down to the kitchen, grab these people...

... and bring them right back up into a dorm filled with 120 people to have them wrap their stuff up when its normal procedure under all kinds of different circumstances for an officer to roll somebody's property up and put it in bags and stuff. It's not unheard of.

If they get in a fight, if there's situations like that, they don't allow you to roll up your property, you have 2 lockboxes and an officer rolls your property up for you, so it's something that regularly happens anyways and could have and should have happened...

... in a situation like this.

But instead, they marched these people who they know are COVID-19 positive up into a dorm with 120 people and just further spread it.

It's frustrating in here right now. You have a lot of inmates literally standing up saying, "What the fuck? Why are you guys doing this to us?" And you have a lot of officers just saying, "Tough, can't do anything about it. Deal with it. We're in charge and you're not."

And then one other thing that I never brought up last time which I now find to be incredibly relevant and I'll use bunk number 1076 in dorm number 1 as an example.

The first round of COVID tests bunk 1076 tested positive for COVID-19. He was a part of the whole shenanigan...

... where they left everybody in here for 24 hours and then shipped him out the next day.

They are not decontaminating areas that they know are COVID-19 positive, they're not!

There's decontamination, kind of, of the day room with this ion machine but these are areas...

... they don't know have COVID, they just regularly do it. Areas that they know have COVID because the person has tested positive they're not decontaminating. So when the first round of testing happened and bunk 1076 was shipped out, a new person was brought...

... to this institution and put in bunk 1076 without decontaminating it. This second round of COVID tests the new guy in bunk 1076 got COVID-19. And has been shipped out because he has COVID-19.

[Do you know if it's directly because he was put in a contaminated space?]

He was put in the contaminated zone! I can't conclusively say that's how he got COVID, because he might have easily gotten it from the fact that we had people left in here and we have people refusing to test and the DOC is not quarantining them but it's just as highly likely...

... and relevant that they put a person in... and they don't even wait!

There's no like "OK we're gonna give it a couple hours, a couple days, they just move somebody immediately in a contaminated zone without cleaning it."

And that guy has now been shipped out because he's COVID positive.

So it's... it's... It's happened again.

Multiple situations where they are just not caring about how dangerous COVID is, and they're not even following their own protocols.

So with the lawsuit that the Oregon Justice Resource Center filed originally there was a lot of preliminary injunctions they asked for and they were denied because, I mean this is what ____ told me, the judge praised the Department of Corrections and told them...

... "You're doing a wonderful job. You have a great plan in place, this will work." And in essence, I believe that. It was truthful, back then. The Department of Corrections had a phenomenal plan in place.

The problem is when it came to implementing it, they never did.

I mean you can say you're gonna do A, B, C and D all you want, if you don't do it, it doesn't matter! I mean who cares if you sat down and promised people a million things, you never did them so therefore people are dying. And Santiam is a huge example of it...

... just flat out it's a huge example of it, because everything... their own policies are not being followed.

People who are COVID-19 positive are being marched into dorms with hundreds of people. That's my... how did Peter Griffin say it? That grinds my gears!

So, you can turn the recording off.

[Wait, can I ask you a couple questions?]

Oh yeah, go for it.

[So how long were people positive kept around people who weren't this time around? Because the tests were really long, right? How long were the tests?]

If you count that these were not rapid tests, people who were COVID-19 positive... So we had our tests Monday, and today's Wednesday. So it's been 48 hours.

[So how many people do you estimate got it, because right now the COVID-19 tracking page was updated on February 1st...

... so it's missing two days and it's showing 96 positive people?]

96 total at Santiam? Active cases?

[It says 14 active but 96 total.]

Ok that number went down because of that.

[Yeah but these numbers are still from 2 days ago and it sounds like the tests just came back today.]

I can't say facility wide, I can say conclusively my dorm, my dorm had 8 people. And that's 8 out of like a hundred, so on our second round we're talking a 10% positive rate.

And if that holds true for the rest of the institution, and I'm not gonna claim that is the truth, but 8 per dorm? We're talking 30-40 people facility-wide.

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