This testimony was a declaration from the May 7, 2020 filing of a new class action lawsuit over jail conditions related to COVID-19 on behalf of prisoners at Santa Rita Jail against the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office.
I am a prisoner in Santa Rita Jail. Around April 11, 2020, I was in Housing Unit 6. Around the 11th, the Jail removed a number of prisoners, supposedly because they had COVID-19. One of the prisoners was Jose Alonzo Herrera. A few days later, the jail brought Alonzo back, and he told me that they never tested him, but brought him back.
At that time, in our housing unit, there was no room for social distancing. We were not given masks. During pod time and meals, everyone mingled. In April, the jail started what they called sanitizing the pod area. This meant that someone came around with a spray bottle and squirted a couple squirts of diluted bleach on the tables and the phones and walked off. It was either a regular spray bottle or a pressurized bottle. The person would spray one or two squirts and that’s it. They never first wiped the table, so any dirt was still on the table. The disinfectant droplets would land on the surface, but the surface was never wiped afterwards. The disinfectant landed in droplets, spotting the surfaces, not covering the entire surface.
…I got Tylenol only twice. I was running a high fever, over 100 degrees and I had really bad headaches. I asked them for Tylenol and the nurse said to me, “The doctor said no Tylenol. We want your body to fight it off by itself.” And then the nurse closed the door slot and walked off. I never got any cough drops or anything for my cough. I asked for an extra blanket and the jail refused to give me one.
Then around April 16, 2020, the jail came and took Jose Alonzo Herrera again. During this time, I also developed COVID-19 symptoms, and so the jail took me from HU6 to HU8A. The cell they put me in was filthy. There was human hair and garbage everywhere. Nothing had been wiped down. I was afraid that if I didn’t have the corona virus, I would get it here, because the cell had not been cleaned.
A couple of days later they told me I tested positive and I was moved from HU 8A to HU8C. I have a titanium rod in my leg. I was hit by a car several years ago, and the titanium rod goes from my knee to my ankle. It is very hard for me to kneel and I can’t put weight on my knee. I told them that, but the nurse didn’t care.
While I was in Housing Unit 8, I got Tylenol only twice. I was running a high fever, over 100 degrees and I had really bad headaches. I asked them for Tylenol and the nurse said to me, “The doctor said no Tylenol. We want your body to fight it off by itself.” And then the nurse closed the door slot and walked off. I never got any cough drops or anything for my cough. I asked for an extra blanket and the jail refused to give me one.
The trays food is served on are not clean. The jail just puts new food on top of old food without cleaning it up. Often, underneath the dinner food is dried, left over cereal from breakfast.