To: The Carceral State Project
From: Tyrone Lee Reyes
On April 28th, 2020, my worst fear manifested itself into a reality. Less than twenty-four after my unit got tested, a lot of people tested positive. It was an emotional time, because I’m around these guys everyday. I hear the pain in their voice, because of the unknown as to whether they’re going to overcome this virus or not. It pisses me off, because I warned the Warden that putting those quarantine guys in the unit connected to ours, put all of our lives at risk. I knew this was going to happen. But yet, a prisoner opinion, observation and knowledge of this virus means nothing to them. This is just the beginning of the spread of the Coronavirus on the Level II side of G. Robert Cotton Corr. Fac.
I’ve been around some of these guys and knowing that this could’ve possibly been prevented, irks me to my core. Our lives is entrusted to the state and those hired to protect us. These people earn all of this money and is playing Russian Roulette with our lives. I’ve seen some officers get mad, frustrated and cuss prisoners out about this virus like we’re the ones infested. What they fail to realize, they’re the one that has to bring it in for us to get it.
Approximately 16 prisoners in my unit tested positive. The downfall of these results, the rest of us may have been negative, we were exposed to these positive cases for twemty-four hours. Once the positive cases were removed from the unit, the unit was back to normal operation. More exposure, lead to the spreading of this virus. Will we get tested after the 14 period? Highly unlikely, because the only number they care about is all of the negative results.
I’m not going to lie, this is an emotional episode. I never thought I would react like this, but as stated before I knew almost every last one of these guys. Right now, their family is unaware of what they’re going through. These guys is going to need them more than ever. This virus has no purpose, but to destroy.
We need voices to speak on this loudly and consistently, because the handling of this is becoming emotionally draining, danger to our health, and very unruly or disruptive to the safety of all involved. These people is putting money and security over health.How and why? They refuse to do a wide spread testing screen on officers and non-custodian staff, because they know the number of positive cases will be astronomical. Leading to them being more short on officers, where they are already mandated to with work double shift day after day. What they fail to realize, our state is still in a State of Emergency, meaning if needed the National Guard Reserves is at their disposal too. So, security will not be a factor.
Why the reluctant to provide them the luxury to be tested too? Several officers has been tested positive already and that’s only because they were showing symptoms. There’s no telling how many officers, staff, and prisoners he exposed to the virus. The list of incompetence in dealing with this is one too many.
