It’s hot, AC is out and staff at California prison have COVID-19: ‘I feel so helpless’
It’s another boiling summer in the San Joaquin Valley, where temperatures often top 100 degrees.
And once again, the air conditioning is on the fritz at the Mendota federal prison 35 miles west of Fresno.
This time, hundreds of inmates are coping with another threat: A coronavirus outbreak that has them stewing in hot quarters with limited time to shower and no time outdoors.
The heat and simmering tensions have prompted the prison’s union to launch a new round of appeals to the Department of Justice, making complaints centered on safety and alleged retaliation against staff members who try to report problems.
They also learned this week that two of their coworkers and an inmate had tested positive for coronavirus, according to an email sent to prison staff.
“My biggest fear is these inmates are going to take out their aggressions and assault my coworkers,” said Aaron McGlothin, the union head for correctional officers at the prison. “We already had one staff member get assaulted and God forbid another one gets assaulted due to management’s shortcomings.”
It’s not the first time the relatively new prison — it was built in 2012 — has struggled through a summer with inconsistent air conditioning. It had issues with air conditioning in other parts of the building for years, as well as toxic mold found in the control room where officers are stationed 24 hours per day, according to staff complaints last year.
This summer, the outages are occurring in a previously unused wing that the prison opened to provide more space for inmates during the coronavirus outbreak, which has overwhelmed other federal prisons in California.
It’s also been breaking intermittently in the commissary, where inmates can buy snacks, the laundry area and in an administration building as recently as the July 4 weekend. McGlothin said it has been so hot inside that at the commissary food like chocolate has been melting and other items have spoiled.
A spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons who did not provide their name denied there was something wrong with air conditioning at the prison.
“The HVAC system at FCI Mendota is operating appropriately. Routine maintenance and system inspections are required and performed regularly by trained and qualified staff,” the spokesperson said. “If issues arise, arrangements are made immediately to address the problems.”
The recent problems all happened while the prison is dealing with leadership turnover. The prison’s previous warden was reassigned to another prison in May, and now the prison is operating under two associate wardens.
“I feel so helpless,” McGlothin said. “This is wrong. This is what happens when you have failed leadership, no warden.”
Imprisoned without air conditioning
Inmates moved into the wing with inconsistent air conditioning about three months ago, according to McGlothin. He said the system might run well for a couple of weeks but it keeps going down, sometimes for days at a time.
Paul Millan, who was the foreman in charge of maintenance on the air conditioning, also said the system has broken several times since the wing opened.
Emile DeWeaver, a fellow at Impact Justice, an advocacy organization for changing the current justice system who was incarcerated at three different California state prisons for 21 years and released in 2018, said he’s experienced being at a prison in 100-degree heat with no air conditioning during long lockdowns, when inmates are confined to their cells all day, every day.
“It’s “demoralizing” and “miserable,” he said.
“I would take off my clothes, sometimes I would wet my towel and lay it on me, and I’d move as little as possible,” DeWeaver said, describing what people would have to do to keep cool in those conditions. “I was lucky because I can sleep through anything. So you do that if you can, you sleep as much as you can, or you wrap the wet towel on your head, or you splash water on yourself from your sink.”
From his own experience, DeWeaver said viruses spread easily in prisons. He never went a full year without getting the flu while incarcerated, he remembered.
Confrontations were common during summertime lockdowns, like the Mendota inmates are experiencing now, he said.
“When it gets hot and you’re in a cell, you definitely get more irritable, people get more confrontational,” DeWeaver said. “That’s not a prison thing, it’s just because that’s how people work.”
Coronavirus and retaliation
Two employees tested positive for the coronavirus on Monday and one has symptoms but is awaiting test results, McGlothin said. All three worked in an area supervising the special housing unit, commonly known as solitary confinement, and McGlothin said employees were telling management that the area needed to be sanitized more often.
McGlothin said prison officials on Monday told him they were sending people in to sanitize the area — after they got news of the positive tests — but before that McGlothin said it had been about a month since the area was sanitized.
“It’s too late, you’ve already put staff at risk,” McGlothin said. “It’s the most critical place in the prison to sanitize, and they failed to do it.”
McGlothin said transmission risks were also heightened because staff is forced to reuse masks, even though he has 14,000 masks in storage waiting to be used. The Bureau of Prisons does not allow employees to use or procure their own masks.
Millan and McGlothin spoke to McClatchy about air conditioning issues last year, as well. Two hours after McClatchy sent a list of questions about air conditioning issues to the Bureau of Prisons on July 1, including a link to the past article that quoted Millan, Millan’s supervisors and other staff demanded he let them into his office, according to a complaint McGlothin filed with Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.
“They rifled through his two filing cabinets. They were taking pictures of his drawers and Mr. Millan asked for an explanation and none was given,” the complaint reads. “When he asked for Union representation, he was denied the right.”
Millan was then given a memo Thursday morning saying he was being reassigned to the phone room, where he would monitor inmate phone calls and emails for 10 hours a day, and that he was not allowed back in the main campus without permission.
“It’s a glass office you see as you walk up to the prison,” Millan said. “When they assign you there, it’s meant to shame you.”
No one explained to Millan why he was being reassigned, but Millan and McGlothin said they believe it was due to retaliation from McClatchy’s media request. When McGlothin asked an acting associate warden, he said he was told the prison is investigating Millan. The official would not specify what the investigation was about, and McGlothin said only one of the four staff members going through Millan’s office were trained investigators.
McGlothin said Millan is the only employee at FCI Mendota certified to work on the air conditioning. So if it breaks again, the prison will have to use a contractor to fix it, which “could take days or weeks.”
The Bureau of Prisons spokesperson declined to comment on the alleged retaliation issues.
“The information you requested about a specific staff members is not public information,” the spokesperson said. “Therefore, for privacy reasons we decline to comment.”
This story was originally published July 7, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "It’s hot, AC is out and staff at California prison have COVID-19: ‘I feel so helpless’."
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