OUTBREAK INSIDE
Mercer officials admit a problem in county lockup as 30% of inmates test positive for COVID-19; inmates and staff want more testing and care
An “outbreak” of COVID-19 has infected nearly 30 percent of the Mercer County Correction Center’s 302 inmates, county officials acknowledged.
Positive cases of the deadly virus jumped from five as of May 12 to 88 nine days later, county officials said, with results of least another 50 tests pending.
Officials insisted “nearly all” the inmates who are positive for the virus were asymptomatic, which is contradicted by what dozens of inmates and their loved ones told The Trentonian in interviews over the past week.
Some of the inmates exhibiting COVID-19 symptoms were allowed to remain in general population for weeks until positive test results returned, increasing the chances that they’d infect other inmates, attorneys and inmates said.
Many of the inmates interviewed by The Trentonian said they experienced hallmarks of the respiratory disease, including fever, body aches, chills and loss of taste and smell.
Conditions have grown so dire inside county lockup that detainees organized a dayslong hunger strike to force a meeting with Warden Charles Ellis over concerns about the escalating crisis behind the jail walls.
The county disputed that the hunger strike happened, but the newspaper interviewed several inmates who acknowledged participating in it.
“There is no organized hunger strike,” county spokeswoman Julie Willmot said Monday. “Staff report that everyone is accepting their meals.”
The hunger strike has since ended, but tensions ran so high over it that a detainee was attacked for refusing to participate, several inmates said.
Making matters worse, the victim of the attack, 24-year-old Dayshawn Rattley, confirmed to The Trentonian that he was one of the 88 detainees who is positive for COVID-19.
The county claimed the incident arose from a “personal dispute outside the jail.” Rattley did not intimately know the man who attacked, calling him an “associate,” and insisted the attack stemmed from his refusal to participate in the hunger strike.
“They been losing their mind because of the coronavirus,” said Rattley, who suffered burns to his face and chest after an the inmate scalded him with hot coffee and used a mop stick to beat him over the head, requiring 16 stitches to close the wound.
The crisis in county lockup is one faced by institutions across the state and country.
New Jersey has one of the highest prison death tolls in the U.S. behind only Ohio, Michigan and federal prisons that have reported more deaths, according to data compiled by The Marshall Project.
While Gov. Phil Murphy announced universal testing for inmates and staff weeks ago to try to stem the rate of infection and mortality, Mercer County jail officials initially resisted a union-backed push for universal testing, until after the state recently declared an “outbreak” at the facility.
The outrage might have been ratcheted up if not but for the fact that, unlike many state corrections institutions, Mercer County jail hasn’t suffered a single death — something county officials point to as evidence of their success combating the virus.
But detainees and their loved ones fear it’s a matter of time before the jail suffers its first fatality unless robust measures are adopted to stop the deadly plague.
“I think its going to take somebody to actually pass for this to blow up,” said one detainee who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “It’s being swept under the rug. There’s a lack of humanity from the medical staff. They, very bluntly, don’t give a f**k, and the administration is a joke.”
Detainees pointed to the county’s initially reported numbers as artificially low claiming the county was attempting to minimize the virus spread. Attorneys pointed to a lag in accuracy of the positive cases in sworn certifications from Ellis.
In response to those concerns, the county said Monday that universal testing was “underway.”
Level of ‘Outbreak’
At least 15 corrections officers and two civilian employees tested positive for COVID-19, 10 of whom are are still out on leave, county officials said.
Donald J. Ryland, president of PBA Local 167, told The Trentonian in a recent interview that the union asked the Mercer County administration to test every single correction center officer and civilian employee for COVID-19.
“They haven’t given a formal response yet,” Ryland said of the administration. “I believe they are examining the request of the union, but we haven’t had a formal response yet. They are moving to have all of the detainees tested. There’s a sense of urgency, but there is hope the county will be moving to have the staff tested as well.”
County spokeswoman Julie Willmot said in an email the county is working with a contracted health officer in Hopewell Township who recommended “all staff who have not been tested should be tested as soon as practical.”
That posture changed from what it was May 12, when the county refused COVID-19 testing for all employees believing negative results provided few guarantees and testing “officers daily or routinely would give a false sense of security.”
Reliability of COVID-19 tests has been debated, but researchers at the University of California found that the serological tests they compared had less than a 5 percent chance of producing false positives.
Mercer County officials expect to begin testing staff this week at the county-run test site or at a mobile test site set up at the corrections center, Willmot said.
The decision comes after more than half the detainees tested at the county jail (88 out 173) came back positive for COVID-19. Many prisoners reported learning of the results late last week.
Sickened detainees have been quarantined from the general population in a dormitory-style setting that is nearly impossible to social distance, the inmates said. County officials dubbed the
Medical Social Distance Unit, where the inmates are treated and observed for symptoms.
Detainees exhibiting symptoms were not sent to the medical quarantine unit until positive test results came back, inmates and attorneys said.
Many point to the lack of stringent quarantine protocols in the early stages of the pandemic as one of the primary reasons the jail now is contending with an outbreak.
Trenton-based attorney Robin Lord said detainees were kept in a “Petri dish.”
“They had a protocol where they treated them as if they had the flu and then sent them back into general population,” Lord said. “If they didn’t get better, then they would test them for COVID-19. Took an outbreak for them to realize what they were doing was wrong.”
Many inmates reported that a nurse delivered news of their positive results in a mass announcement.
The inmates demanded paperwork proving the results so they could provide to their loved ones and attorneys but were delayed getting those results after jail officials demanded they sign HIPAA waivers in order to disclose the medical records.
Some inmates viewed the move with increasing suspicion feeling it was a way of officials trying to keep word from getting out about how widespread the outbreak is at the jail.
Furthering that school of thought, the county does not post the daily number of infected inmates and jail workers on its website, like the state Department of Corrections, and The Trentonian had to inquire about the latest numbers in order to learn of the extent of the problem.
Willmot said “aggregate” numbers are included in the county’s coronavirus ticker for Hopewell Township, and she’d check with officials about whether that’s something they’d consider disseminating on the website in the future.
That being the case, the tracker shows an astonishing 71 percent of the township’s 124 reported cases are inmates lodged at the county jail.
Inmates Speak Out
Lord said more than a dozen of her 16 clients at the county jail have symptoms of the virus.
Walter Mason, 39, is one of the inmates represented by Lord. He’s been bothered for weeks by a constant cough and felt like he had “water on my lungs,” among other symptoms, for weeks.
“The warden was saying we’re safe [in here]. We caught COVID-19,” he said.
“They’re treating us like animals. It feels like hell. They can’t quarantine us in the dorm. There’s no way to practice social distancing at all in here.”
Jerome Koon, 27, has been lodged at the county jail since he was arrested by U.S. Marshals in Fargo, North Dakota in October on a felony warrant for failure to appear in court for a weapons charge.
“They’re trying to make it like this building is contained and they have it under control,” he said. “We’re hoping to expose what’s going on in here this is nonsense . ... They’re failing us, and they’re continuing to fail us.”
Lord has only sprung one of her clients from the jail despite filing court papers to compel release for those not accused of violent offenses, hoping that would increase judges’ likelihood of taking the motions seriously.
One of Lord’s clients compared the virus in the jail to being on “death row waiting to die.”
“They’re literally playing god with lives,” she said. “I’ve got mothers texting me crying. I said to them, ‘Nobody cares.’ I’ve made these arguments and nobody seems to care. I feel like the judiciary and the criminal justice system has turned their backs on these fellow human beings. It’s just not right.”
In March, the state Supreme Court ordered lowrisk county inmates released amid the pandemic. And Murphy signed an executive order that paved the way for medical furloughs for older and non-violent offenders most susceptible to the virus.
But attorneys in Mercer County complained pretrial detainees, still presumed innocent while incarcerated awaiting trial, are among the forgotten prisoners of New Jersey.
Also among those 88 infected at MCCC are Jaquan Reddick, 34, Mark Smith, 30, Charles Bethea, 50, and Andre McMullen, 29.
“Parole is literally making me stay in this and put my life at risk,” said Reddick, who was arrested in February on weapons offenses.
“They aren’t doing anything but taking our temperature,” Smith said.
Bethea, 50, called the jail’s efforts “reactive rather than proactive.”
“It’s more like a thirdworld country than a place in America,” he said. “They take our temperatures as if that’s the holy grail.”
McMullen, 29, was arrested in Trenton on Oct. 22, 2019, and charged with drug offenses and unlawful possession of a handgun.
A judge last fall ordered McMullen to be jailed without bail. He pleaded guilty to weapons offenses on March 2 and was sentenced May 8 to five years of incarceration, according to court records.
McMullen tested positive for coronavirus this month and has not yet been transferred to a state prison, according to his mother.
She said her son is one of 16 inmates in the southeast tier who contracted the infectious disease and that 13 more inmates in another southeast tier also tested positive.
“My son calls me every day,” Karen McMullen said. “They are in there sick. It’s really sad . ... He said his chest and head hurts so bad. He said, ‘Mom, you’ve gotta do something; they are doing nothing for me.’ He says, ‘You’ve gotta help me.’ I just broke down, because that is my son. … He can’t breathe. He needs to be on a ventilator. My son could die.”
Karen McMullen said the condition of the jail doesn’t help. Officials have pushed to relocate as many as 300 inmates to Hudson County, a plan that was passed by the county freeholders but has been halted while a lawsuit brought by the state public defender’s office plays out.
The correction center in recent years has underwent a series of repairs for issues including broken plumbing in many living units; rust and mold present in many living units; insufficient number of operable showers, toilets, and washbasins for the number of inmates housed in most living units at capacity; and damage to walls with cracks and or missing blocks, according to a September 2019 report issued by NW Financial Group LLC.
Inmates and workers are in close quarters as the jail had 219 uniformed officers and 46 civilian employees as of 2018, according to NW Financial.
“How jails are designed it is difficult to social distance and space detainees out just in how jails are composed,” Ryland said, “so we would definitely want the county to be proactive to try to get a grip on things.”
Lord, the hard-charging defense attorney, believes officials are reluctant to admit they’ve lost control as the virus takes hold of the county corrections center.
“Don’t ask don’t tell,” she said. “That’s their f**king motto.”