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At Bexar County jail, inmates complain of superficial cleanings, scarce soap and flimsy masks amid COVID outbreak
About a week ago, after a few inmates in Bexar County Jail tested positive for the coronavirus, Josh Perusquia sat down in his barren 4-by-8-foot cell and wrote a letter to his longtime girlfriend, Patricia.
“I really need you right now, my love,” he wrote. “I don’t really get scared of anything but COVID-19 being in the building where I am trapped is starting to freak me out more and more.”
“I don’t want to get sick in here,” he continued, his neat handwriting filling the yellow legal notepad. “All we can do is wait and hope to hear something good.”
By Sunday, the number of inmates infected with the virus had grown to 20, including three being treated at a hospital. In addition, 21 deputies and five staffers who work at the jail have tested positive. Fourteen of the deputies were in the same cadet class, fresh from the training academy.
In response to the outbreak, Sheriff Javier Salazar said he enacted a handful of changes at the jail, including the distribution of masks to all 3,000 inmates, twice-daily temperature checks and frequent cleanings of common areas, including the recreation room.
Do you work at the Bexar County Jail, or do you know individuals who are incarcerated there? Share your experience about the COVID-19 jail outbreak with reporter Emilie Eaton at eeaton@express-news.net or 210-650-2779. Your identity can remain confidential.
He said several units are locked down — confining nearly 1,000 inmates to their cells for 23 hours a day — and that the jail’s inmate worker program has been suspended after an inmate working in the kitchen was possibly exposed to the virus.
But some say those changes didn’t happen soon enough and are not as they were outlined.
In interviews with nearly a dozen inmates, their families and lawyers, they described a facility where 60 inmates are housed in a space with bunk beds barely 3 feet apart, not nearly the 6-foot separation needed for safe social distancing, cleanings are infrequent and not thorough, disinfectant is watered down, and temperature checks occur less than twice a day.
The inmates said the staff provide minimal information about the outbreak in the jail, feeding false rumors about the virus. They talked about feeling scared and dealing with their fear by making morbid jokes about death.
Lately, meals have been irregular and meager. One morning, it was a plate of vegetables and an uncooked potato, they said. Another day, after breakfast wasn’t served at 2 a.m. as scheduled, inmates pounded on their cell doors.
“It was hard last night,” Perusquia said during an interview Friday with the San Antonio Express-News. “I could hear everyone banging on the doors asking for food. I could hear it from two floors away. It kept me up all night.”
On ExpressNews.com: Get the latest update on coronavirus and a tracking map of U.S. cases
Five inmates said cleaning of the common areas was not happening twice daily, as the sheriff says. Inmates, who do the cleanings, said the yellow solution used could be described as “warm water” or “warm water with a tiny bit of disinfectant.” They said they’re not able to get more of it.
Leilani Minjarez said her husband, who is in jail on a family violence charge, was tasked with cleaning the common areas a few weeks ago.
“It’s not even a cleaning solution,” she said. “It’s 20 times diluted. He says he feels like he’s cleaning with dirty water.”
All the inmates said they weren’t given masks until a week ago — after the first inmate tested positive. By some estimates, it took even longer. They said the masks are flimsy and look like they’re meant to be disposed of daily. Some are falling apart. The guards have refused to give them new ones, they said.
The inmates are each provided with one small, motel-size bar of soap a week, and when that is gone, they said, they either do without, find scraps that other inmates have left behind or have to buy more from the jail commissary.
Inmates who don’t have money to spend on food in the commissary go hungry. One man told his lawyer that “everyone is starving.”
Meal portions are much smaller, the inmates said, and the quality is worse than normal. Lunch on Sunday — oatmeal and a sausage patty — was served two hours late. On Saturday, breakfast was a concoction with potatoes that was unrecognizable and tasted like cat food, one man said.
“We’re extremely scared in here right now,” said Thomas Hanna, who was arrested in January on two nonviolent drug charges while on parole. “They’re not doing anything.”
Salazar, in an interview Friday night, said the jail is being cleaned regularly. Inmates might not see all the cleaning, and the disinfectant used may not smell strong — like the odor of bleach — but proper disinfecting measures are in place, he said.
In an ideal world, the inmates would be separated into smaller units throughout the jail, he said, but administrators have to take inmates’ criminal history, possible gang affiliation and criminal charge into account when placing them.
Salazar acknowledged that some inmates weren’t given breakfast Friday morning but said it was done to ensure they weren’t exposed to contaminated food. He said the Sheriff’s Office is working with Aramark, a company that provides food and other services to institutions, to have inmates’ meals prepared offsite and improve the process.
The jail has about 9,000 masks earmarked for inmates, Salazar said. Anytime a person’s mask is soiled or no longer functional, jailers have been instructed to provide inmates with new ones. Another shipment of masks is expected soon, he said.
Each inmate is also given a small bar of soap once or twice a week, and once used, they can ask for a new one, Salazar said, without having to buy one from the commissary.
“We wouldn’t take that chance,” he said. “That’s not something we would want to hoard or keep from inmates. We have upped our efforts, and we will continue to work diligently to make sure all deputies and inmates are safe.”
Life on the inside
Before the pandemic, life on the inside was considerably easier.
Perusquia, 27, spent as many as eight hours a day exercising in the recreation yard, watching TV, playing cards or making phone calls to family — including his four children who are staying with their mother and the two children he’s raising with his longtime girlfriend.
Perusquia, whom his girlfriend described as a hardworking truck driver, was arrested in 2018 and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a felony. He said he was defending himself.
As part of a deal offered by prosecutors, Perusquia pleaded no contest and was sentenced to five years’ probation, court records show. On Dec. 31, after he was charged with two counts of drug possession under 1 gram, prosecutors moved to revoke his probation and offered him eight years in prison or six to nine months in a rehabilitation program.
He chose the latter.
On Jan. 29, Judge Jefferson Moore finalized the agreement and ordered Perusquia to complete treatment at the Substance Abuse Treatment Facility off Applewhite Road on the South Side.
Perusquia has been waiting to be transferred since.
On April 9, a detention deputy told Perusquia to pack his belongings, that he was “catching chain” — the process of being shackled and sent to a new facility.
But when Perusquia arrived at the transfer area, he was told the move was canceled at the last minute because the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was no longer accepting transfers — even though he was being moved to the rehab facility, not TDCJ.
“It’s tough, not knowing when anything is going to happen,” he said. “I talk to my kids every day. They ask when I’m coming home. They ask if I’m going to get sick.”
Patricia Newby, Perusquia’s longtime girlfriend, makes no excuses for her partner’s behavior, and she’s hopeful that drug treatment will help him.
“He’s not a bad person,” Newby said. “I wouldn’t be advocating for him if he was. He made a mistake, but he doesn’t deserve to get sick and die in there.”
If the rehab facility has temporarily stopped accepting inmates because of the coronavirus pandemic, she wonders why Perusquia can’t stay at home on GPS monitoring until his treatment can start.
Perusquia said he has been told that any time spent in jail will not go toward the six to nine months he’s required to spend at rehab.
Last week, Perusquia was being housed in a block with about 60 other men, two inmates per cell.
But over the weekend, the group was transferred to South Tower, where the inmates are housed in one large, open area, separated by 6-foot-tall metal partitions.
Jason Shader, who was arrested in November on two felony charges — drug possession and felon in possession of a firearm — said the new area didn’t look like it had been cleaned before they arrived. There were spots all over the surfaces.
When the inmates asked for disinfectant to clean, they were denied, he said.
“Some guys had to steal cleaner, which is ironic, because we are supposed to be in here to be reformed,” Shader said. “And we had to clean everything ourselves.”
He said the new living area has four bunk beds in each section. The beds are all within an arm’s distance. When lying down, he can easily reach out to touch the guy next to him. And inmates aren’t required to wear their masks while in their living quarters.
“Social distancing is nonexistent,” Shader said. “They don’t enforce it. Even if the guards are only allowing 20 men in the day room, we are still clustered together in our living quarters for 23 hours” a day.
Shader said he’s asked for a new mask for two days. Both times, he says, he was denied.
“I’m real angry,” he said. “I’m frustrated. And I’m super scared. Scared is probably an understatement. I feel like they are recklessly endangering our lives.”
Public at risk, too
Controlling an outbreak at the jail is crucial, experts say, in part because the jail’s population is largely transient. Hundreds of people are being booked and released every day.
A large outbreak at the jail could accelerate the virus’ spread, endangering not only staff and inmates, but the public at large.
“A jail has the capability of incubating an illness and amplifying it,” Salazar said Friday. “You have 100 people who are walking out that door on a daily basis. That’s scary. The last thing I want to do is be responsible for an outbreak in the community because of someone leaving the jail.”
Valerie Hedlund, a San Antonio attorney, has four clients in jail and is worried about their health and the repercussions their confinement could have.
One client, she said, was arrested April 10 after police say he swapped price tags for a $138 purchase while shopping with his wife at Walmart.
On ExpressNews.com: Procedures for S.A. law enforcement evolve amid coronavirus outbreak
Police officers, she said, could have arrested her client on any number of charges — such as shoplifting, which is eligible under state law for “cite and release” and treated like a traffic ticket. Or the officers could have issued him a warning and led him off the property.
Instead, they arrested him on a charge of fraudulent destruction, removal or concealment of writing, a misdemeanor. A judge set his bail at $400.
“There was no violence,” Hedlund said. “It was a matter of finances. I don’t think he should be languishing in jail for something like that.”
Previously, Hedlund’s client could still have been eligible for a personal recognizance bond — meaning he would not need any cash to be released. But a recent order by Gov. Greg Abbott that banned the release of inmates with violent criminal histories unless they post bail has complicated that process, taking discretion away from judges.
Hedlund’s client has a past domestic violence charge that she said was dismissed.
On Wednesday, after her client had spent several days in jail, Hedlund sought the PR bond. Instead, the judge lowered the man’s bail to $100, Hedlund said.
The last time she checked, her client still hadn’t been released.
“I’m happy the judge lowered his bond. That is all well and good,” she said. “But unfortunately, it took over a week to get to that point — time in which he could have been exposed to the virus. Now, when he’s released, his family and the community could be at risk.”
Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Emilie, become a subscriber. eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton
