[Pnews] California Investigates Attack by Guards at Scandal-Plagued Women’s Prison

[Prisoner News]

theappeal.org
<https://theappeal.org/central-california-womens-facility-guards-attack/>
California Investigates Attack by Guards at Scandal-Plagued Women’s Prison
Victoria Law - Sep 05, 2024
------------------------------

Correctional officers allegedly used chemical spray and pepper bombs
against women in handcuffs at Central California Women’s Facility.
[image: Central California Women's Facility] Central California Women’s
Facility in Chowchilla, CaliforniaCalifornia Department of Corrections and
Rehabilitation
------------------------------

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has
opened an internal affairs investigation into an Aug. 2 use-of-force
incident at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF), a CDCR
spokesperson told The Appeal.

During a contraband search, correctional officers locked more than 100
women in a prison cafeteria without air-conditioning for several hours.
When they asked for food, medication, and explanations, staff responded
with chemical spray and physical violence. According to multiple witnesses,
guards continued to bombard them with chemical spray and pepper bombs even
after they were zip-tied and on the ground. Three women were sent to the
hospital.

CCWF, located in Chowchilla in the heart of California’s Central Valley, is
the United States’ second-largest women’s prison. The facility has faced dozens
of lawsuits
<https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc7.com/amp/california-department-of-corrections-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-former-inmates/14328254/>
alleging sexual assault by prison staff, and in 2023 the Madera County
District Attorney charged a former guard with nearly 100 counts of sexual
abuse
<https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/25/gregory-rodriguez-california-correctional-officer-accused-sexual-assault-womens-prison>.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a civil rights
investigation
<https://abc30.com/post/civil-rights-investigation-being-launched-sexual-abuse-claims-chowchilla-womens-prison/15267865/>
into sexual misconduct at CCWF and the California Institution for Women.

Large-scale physical violence, like the attack last month, is far less
common. The Appeal spoke with over a dozen currently or formerly
incarcerated women, including those who had been imprisoned at CCWF since
the 1990s; none had ever witnessed or experienced staff brutality of that
magnitude. They now demand that CDCR discipline staff involved in events
that day, provide medical and mental health care access, and issue
confiscation slips, which would help them get back or be reimbursed for
lost and destroyed belongings.

“The safety and well-being of the incarcerated individuals living at
California institutions is of the utmost importance. Any accusations of
wrongdoing are taken seriously and thoroughly investigated,” a CDCR
spokesperson wrote in an email to The Appeal. “CDCR has identified
concerning information about the handling of the Aug. 2 incident … and is
taking swift action.”
“Shooting Fish in a Bucket”

Donyette Clark, 37, has experienced many searches during her 14 years at
CCWF. Staff frequently search for contraband, ranging from extra pillows
and altered clothes to cell phones, makeshift weapons, and homemade
alcohol.

But on the morning of Aug. 2, when officers ordered her and her roommates
out of their cell, she realized this was no routine search. She and the
other women from housing unit 513 waited in the cafeteria as staff
overturned their rooms.

Nearly three hours later, they were still waiting in the sweltering,
crowded dining area. The temperature outside was over 90 degrees, and the
prison’s evaporative coolers, or swamp coolers, failed to control the heat
<https://theappeal.org/prison-heat-deaths-climate-change/>. The month
before, Adrienne Boulware, 47, died during a week when temperatures
exceeded 100 degrees
<https://theappeal.org/prison-heat-deaths-climate-change/>. Many were still
grieving her death when guards herded them into the chow hall that morning.

No one had been fed. No one had received their morning medications and,
with noon approaching, several women asked to speak with the sergeant about
getting lunches and medications.

At the same time, women saw officers carting away bins filled with clothes,
shoes, appliances, and other personal property. Officers said they were
enforcing the prison policy limiting each person’s possessions to six cubic
feet
<https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/regulations/wp-content/uploads/sites/171/2023/10/Authorized-Personal-Property-Schedule.pdf>
.

However, prison rules dictate
<https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/ombuds/ombuds/arrival/> that people can mail
excess items home, donate them, or challenge their confiscation via the
prison’s grievance process. Those in the cafeteria protested the
confiscations and demanded to speak with the sergeant.

“Everybody was getting frustrated and complaining loudly,” JM, another
woman on the unit, who asked to be identified by her initials to lessen the
risks of retaliation, told The Appeal. But, she added, no one was
aggressive or threatening.

According to JM and Clark, that’s when Sergeant Fernando Arroyo entered
with a squad of officers who surrounded the women.

At first, the sight didn’t frighten Clark.

“As long as we’re not fighting, threatening them or advancing, they can’t
use force on us,” she reassured the younger women. No sooner were the words
out of her mouth than officers began spraying them and throwing bombs
<https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/ab481/> filled with oleoresin capsicum (OC), or
pepper spray.

Women attempted to flee to the back of the chow hall. Some tried to cover
their faces with their shirts. A handful threw their state-issued plastic
cups—the only items they had been allowed to bring—at the officers.

“They let out a round of spray that looked like a river of orange,” said
Christina Wind, 39.

Staff ordered them to lie flat on the floor. Even then, multiple women said
that officers continued to spray them and lob OC bombs at them, causing
even more chaos and panic. Those on the ground were stepped on by those
trying to escape.

Women in unit 513 told The Appeal that guards continued their attack even
as several women began exhibiting medical emergencies. Catrina Cameron, 36,
has asthma and wears a pacemaker. She told officers that she had chest
pains. In response, she said, they sprayed her in the eye and slammed her
onto the floor.

Wind told The Appeal that she saw Cameron on the floor and attempted to
pick her up. Unable to clearly see, Wind pulled a sergeant off her partner.
In response, officers beat her. “I was hit in the head and went down,” she
said. She was unable to open her eyes while being hit, zip-tied, and
dragged out in a wheelchair. According to Cameron and others who saw her
before guards took her away, Wind was frothing at the mouth and vomiting;
the left side of her face was sagging.

Then, staff placed the rest of the women in zip ties and herded them into
the yard. There, multiple women, including those who could see the yard
from their cell windows, said officers continued to spray them.

The 90-degree sun made them feel as if their sprayed skin were on fire.

“A lot of people were crying, throwing up,” JM recalled. Even as they lay
on the ground, she said that officers continued to spray and throw bombs at
them. “They rounded us up like they were shooting fish in a bucket,” she
described.

CDCR <https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/california/15-CCR-3268>
regulations only permit the uncontrolled use of chemical agents when
necessary due to an imminent threat. None of the witnesses who spoke to The
Appeal described any threats to the guards’ safety by the women zip-tied in
the yard.

Clark remembers nothing after the first rounds of spray in the chow hall.
Her next memory is of waking in an ambulance. EMTs told her that she had
had a seizure and passed out.

“I’ve never had a seizure in my life,” Clark said. Three women, including
Clark, were sent to the hospital that day.
“There’s Gonna Be Repercussions”

That weekend, a prison lieutenant approached JM’s cell and asked her to
sign what’s known as a non-enemy chrono, or paperwork that states that she
has no concerns about her safety from anyone in the prison. Signing it
would indicate that JM absolved staff of their actions that Friday. But not
signing it would have resulted in solitary confinement under the pretext
that JM needed protection from enemies.

“Making allegations implies that there’s gonna be repercussions,” JM told
The Appeal. Those repercussions could likely include further staff violence.

SH, 27, was also asked to sign a non-enemy chrono. She had told a nurse
that the bruises on her back were from staff throwing a bomb at her while
she was on the ground. That weekend, correctional officers called her into
a program office where a sergeant and a lieutenant questioned her about her
statement, then asked her to sign a non-enemy chrono stating that staff had
not used force against her.

SH, who was scheduled to go to a reentry program in a few months, worried
that she would face retaliation if she refused to sign the paper. Staff
told her they would return her to her room if she signed the paper. They
never told her she could refuse to sign. She signed.

Less than two weeks later, she was issued a disciplinary citation, or 115,
for obstructing a peace officer. “I signed this paper trying to avoid all
this and not get retaliated against, and then it still affects [me],” she
told The Appeal.

Now SH doesn’t know if she’ll be allowed to go to the reentry program. If
not, she will spend another two years in prison.
*“A Higher Standard”*

The women of unit 513 spent the next five days locked in their cells.
Prison staff brought them meals and medications. Once a day, even though
temperatures soared above 100 degrees that week, officers allowed them to
fill a cup or water bottle with drinking water from the day room.
Otherwise, they had to rely on bottled water previously bought from the
commissary.

On Wednesday, Aug. 7, staff let them off lockdown. Prison staff offered
mental health counseling—but in a cruel twist, the women had to enter the
cafeteria to meet with clinicians.

“It triggered my anxiety,” Clark recalled. She initially refused. Then, she
saw officers form a line similar to what they had done the previous Friday.
She convinced others to enter the cafeteria if only to avoid more violence.
There, a clinician told her that, because of a staffing shortage, mental
health professionals could only see her once a week. The following week,
her appointment was canceled; she was told that mental health staff were
overwhelmed by the high demand for counseling after the attack.

Prison staff initially charged Wind with battery and placed her in
segregation for 11 days. When she returned to her cell, the left side of
her face was still drooping, leading her and her cellmates to believe that
the beating triggered a mini-stroke. But aside from a pain medication
injection and an x-ray revealing internal bruising, she has not received
deeper medical attention.

On Monday, Aug. 19, formerly incarcerated women rallied outside the prison
to protest their peers’ brutal treatment and to demand medical and mental
health services, an independent investigation into staff’s use of force,
and the officers’ removal during the inquiry. They also demanded that
prison officials replace the failing swamp coolers with air conditioning
and provide access to cool drinking water, electric fans, and cooling rags
during the sweltering summers.

Inside the prison, women refused their meal trays that morning in a show of
solidarity.

Two days later, the warden called a mass meeting for the women of 513.
According to those who attended, she stated that she could not speak about
the Aug. 2 event because it was under investigation. They also said that
the warden did not apologize for or even acknowledge the violence that
transpired. “It’s really upsetting but always expected,” said Wind.

CDCR declined to answer specific questions sent by The Appeal over email,
but a CDCR spokesperson said that CDCR’s Office of Internal Affairs is
investigating the incident. The spokesperson also said that the prison
began “immediate week-long intensive training on appropriate incident
response” and “redirected” some staff members involved. An anonymous video
supporting the guards claimed that CDCR transferred several officers,
including Sgt. Arroyo, to other prisons after the incident. However,
several women told The Appeal that they saw him in the weeks after. Citing
the ongoing investigation, CDCR declined to verify whether staff had moved
to other prisons.

The women want the employees who participated in that day removed from the
institution altogether and held accountable for their actions. Women have
told The Appeal that they have seen Arroyo and others on their unit
multiple times since that smoke-filled afternoon; each encounter brings
back fears and anxieties from that day. “It’s like you’re raped and you
have to look at your rapist every day,” Cameron said.

“I have a life without parole sentence because I didn’t stand up and do the
right thing when someone else was doing something wrong,” said JM. “But
these officers are held to a higher standard. Any one of them could have
said, ‘Hey, wait, this is wrong. This is too much.’ And no one spoke up.”
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