L.A. inmates tried to infect themselves

The Los Angeles County jail inmates had one goal in mind: get infected with the novel coronavirus so they could be released from custody. And they were going to do it together.

One by one last month, groups of inmates inside the North County Correctional Facility in Castaic, Calif., drank from the same hot-water bottle and sniffed out of one face mask before passing it to the next guy for his turn, according to surveillance footage released Monday by the Los Angeles County Sheriff ’s Department.

The county — with 357 positive tests among inmates and an infection total that has more than tripled since the end of April — had previously released some inmates in response to concerns regarding the pandemic.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva couldn’t immediately explain why a facility that didn’t have a single coronavirus case in mid-April was facing an outbreak a short time later, but he would soon have his answer. On Monday, Villanueva revealed how an outbreak that resulted in 21 inmates testing positive for the virus in less than a week was part of a coordinated effort on the part of its inmate population to infect each other to get out of jail.

“It’s sad to think that someone deliberately tried to expose themselves to COVID-19,” Villanueva said at the Monday 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 gonna happen.”