COVID-19 Cases Spike At San Diego County Jails And Detention Centers

Speaker 1: 00:01 COVID-19 cases are surging in San Diego County, jails, prisons and detention centers. That's according to San Diego County community outbreak records obtained by KPBS KPBS, reporter Claire Tresor says these numbers underscore that inmates and others held in detention or among the viruses most vulnerable targets. I don't think you have to be, you know, an expert to understand that, you know, even if people are in separate cells, the settings require people to share facilities like showers or microwaves or recreational space. Um, just exposes people. [inaudible] is an immigrant's rights attorney at the ACLU. She's among many who have sounded alarms about how vulnerable people in detention are to COVID-19 in April. The ACLU filed a lawsuit to have at-risk immigrant detainees released from the detention center in Otay Mesa. They won the release of about 100 people, but are still fighting for more. There's nothing forcing the federal government to detain anybody. Speaker 1: 01:08 I don't know Tammy, so right. No, she's right. To be worried. County of San Diego outbreak records obtained exclusively by KPBS show. There have been more than 460 cases in the Otay Mesa detention center, which houses, both ice immigration, detainees, and prisoners for the U S marshals and ice spokeswoman disputed that number saying a total of just 200 detainees at the OTA Mesa facility have contracted the virus since the pandemic first struck in March. Ice does not report cases among its staff at the facility or us Marshall prisoners. The OTA Mesa cases are among nearly 1800 reported in jails and detention centers throughout San Diego County for March through December 18th. According to the records, KPBS obtained, Speaker 2: 01:58 Three of us were put into a cell together to be put back upstairs. Speaker 1: 02:02 Jesse Cannon spent two days in the Sheriff's downtown central jail at the beginning of November, after being arrested for obstructing a police officer during a protest Speaker 2: 02:12 There's like half eaten food everywhere. It was that point. I had noticed they gave, they gave him one of the homies, a mask, but then given all of us a mask, I asked for a mask and they were like, Oh, well, you're on the, you're about to bail out. Speaker 1: 02:22 This is not what's supposed to happen. When people arrive at a Sheriff's jail says Lieutenant Kyle Bible, an assistant medical administrator for the department, Speaker 2: 02:31 Before that arrestee even gets out of the car to start our booking process. Our staff who are completely equipped in PBE will go out and as part of their assessment, if that arrestee does not have a mask, one is provided to them. Speaker 1: 02:46 In addition, he says, holding cells are supposed to be cleaned after each new person is brought in and new prisoners are tested for COVID-19 within hours of being brought into booking. Yet, even with these protocols cases have surged at local jails. The KPBS records show more than 600 cases in County jails. As of December 18th, Bible confirmed there had been outbreaks at individual jails and says one outbreak was caused when an inmate was moved from the George Bailey detention facility to the Vista detention facility. Speaker 2: 03:22 The source of that outbreak is, is unknown. You know, we did a CA a very thorough contact tracing, um, and it was determined that, uh, the spread was a result of somebody that was asymptomatic. And that is what's so challenging and tracking this diseases, you could have COVID-19 and bypass, you know, a symptom review or, or a thermometer check. Speaker 1: 03:42 Meanwhile, families of incarcerated people desperately searched for information. Speaker 2: 03:47 People will let us know that, um, they have had outbreaks of COVID Speaker 1: 03:52 Layla Aziz, a criminal justice advocate at the nonprofit pillars of the community says the lack of information leads to more mistrust of law enforcement in the community. Speaker 2: 04:02 Families wouldn't be able to, um, keep track of their loved ones. If we had transparency, we were able to a rapid response or whisk mitigation, something that should be built into our system. We were able to see, we could stop the spread Speaker 1: 04:18 KPBS news, Speaker 3: 04:19 Go to kpbs.org/outbreaks to see a map and searchable database of all community outbreaks of COVID 19 in San Diego County KPBS, investigative assistant, Katie Stegal contributed to this report.