A Los Angeles County sheriff claims inmates are trying to infect themselves with the coronavirus to get an early release and he says there is a video to prove it.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva shared video images of inmates taken in April inside the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, Calif. In the surveillance footage, images show inmates one-by-one drinking from the same hot-water bottle.
Villanueva needed answers for why a facility that didn’t have a single coronavirus case in mid-April was facing an outbreak weeks later with 357 cases. The sherriff said the video explains how an outbreak resulted in 21 inmates testing positive for the virus in less than a week, The Washington Post reported.
The outbreak was part of a coordinated effort on the part of the inmate population to infect each other, thinking they would be released from jail.
Multiple media outlets picked up the story and some are buying the sheriff’s explanation.
“As a direct result of the behavior seen in the video, 21 men tested positive for COVID-19 within a week,” Breaking 911 reported.
“It’s sad to think that someone deliberately tried to expose themselves to covid-19,” Villanueva said at a recent news conference. “Somehow there was some mistaken belief among the inmate population that if they tested positive that there was a way to force our hand and somehow release more inmates out of our jail environment — and that’s not going to happen.”
He added, “It’s dismaying and disheartening.”
Like many prisons across the country, Los Angeles released several inmates early in light of covid-19 pandemics. Los Angeles County jails have reduced their population from a maximum of 17,000 to less than 12,000 since the start of the outbreak, The Washington Post reported. Around the start of the U.S. outbreak in March, L.A. County announced it was releasing inmates with less than 30 days of their sentences remaining to help minimize the spread of the virus.
According to Villanueva, nearly 4,600 inmates are in quarantine, with almost 2,000 of them located at the jail where the videos were taken.
Although Villanueva appears to blame the incarcerated for catching the virus, some activists say his accusation has something to do with a class-action lawsuit filed in April.
The lawsuit contends that the county jail system does not have the space necessary for social distancing and isn’t testing inmates when they show symptoms, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Villanueva’s actions during the pandemic are “an attempt to demonize incarcerated people,” according to Patrisse Cullors, an activist and lead plaintiff in the suit, the Times reported.
Prisons across the country are being overwhelmed with covid-19 cases.
In four state prisons — Arkansas, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia — 3,277 of the 4,693 prisoners tested positive for the virus, according to Reuters.
“I think mass testing is absolutely called for in closed facilities like nursing homes, cruise ships, prisons, jails, and detention centers when there have been confirmed cases,” Christopher Beyrer, MD, MPH, an epidemiologist and professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, told MedPage Today.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 70: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin goes solo to discuss the COVID-19 crisis. He talks about the failed leadership of Trump, Andrew Cuomo, CDC Director Robert Redfield, Surgeon General Jerome Adams, and New York Mayor de Blasio.
“When you incarcerate someone and you take away their ability to take care of their own health, you take responsibility for their health,” Beyrer said.
Prisons should consider abiding by “The Mandela Rules,” a set of public health and human rights principles developed by the World Health Organization, Beyrer suggested according to MedPage Today.
The rules were named after Nelson Mandela, the late South African president who became sick with tuberculosis while he was a prison laborer.
