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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 17, 2022)
REGION THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2022 THE OBSERVER — A3 Prisons still dealing with COVID-19 A number of Eastern Oregon prisons had quarantined following an outbreak of the virus at their facilities By ALEX WITTWER EO Media Group PENDLETON — Eastern Oregon Correc- tional Institution and Two Rivers Correctional Insti- tution in Umatilla County still have housing units in quarantine due to the spread of the COVID-19 virus throughout their facil- ities, according to prison offi cials. Powder River Correc- tional Facility in Baker County is in a heightened state of alert and testing according to the Oregon Department of Corrections COVID-19 tracker, as cases rose among the staff and prisoner population at the end of January. Seven out of the 15 prisons in Oregon as of Tuesday, Feb. 8, had units under quarantine. Overall, case numbers had increased dramatically through January, peaking at 286 active cases for Two Rivers on Jan. 20. In December, those numbers were in the single digits. Those case numbers fell throughout the week. As of Feb. 8, Two Rivers had just one active case of COVID-19. As a percentage of total cases during the entire pan- demic against the number of beds at each facility, Two Rivers ranks the highest by a wide margin. The case-to-bed rate is 68%, while the average across all prisons in Oregon is 33.3%. Critic blames prison staff for virus spread Corrections offi cials wouldn’t say whether or not the COVID-19 cases that spurred a large spike at Two Rivers was due to a staff member, but case numbers and dates shared with EO Media Group show staff at Two Rivers had tested positive on Dec. 29, just 10 days before members of the prison population showed a spike in positive tests. “There is no way of knowing exactly how each positive case originates or is spread,” said Betty Bernt, communications manager for DOC. “When an individual comes into our intake unit, our current process is to test all adults in custody.” Juan Chavez, project director and attorney with the Oregon Jus- tice Resource Center, disagrees. “There’s only one way for the virus to get in, and that’s through the staff ,” he said. “It’s abundantly clear that mask wearing has been scant in par- ticular with correctional offi cers. They haven’t been enforcing the mask wearing policy, they just let it slide. They’re more afraid of losing staff than they are of killing people, in my mind.” Chavez said only the bare minimum was asked from Corrections regarding safety pro- cedures in combating the spread of COVID- 19, including mandatory masking for correctional offi cers and implementing social distancing require- ments. Those require- ments, according to a class action lawsuit fi led in April 2020, were widely ignored. The lawsuit also described practices where correctional offi cers would move from a quarantined unit to an uninfected unit without a mask, likely due to overtime and staffi ng shortages at the facilities. “I think the (COVID-19) situation shakes the entire foundation,” Chavez said. “What we were asking for only sounds extraordinary if we weren’t in extraor- dinary times, and so we needed something grander. And that didn’t happen. A lot of people got hurt.” Two Rivers in litigation spotlight Two Rivers has been especially problem- atic, according to prison attorney Tara Herivel, who has led litigation eff orts for hundreds of cases against the Department of Correc- tions. Herivel said approx- imately 80% of her cases are against Two Rivers. According to Herivel, despite the litigation and sea of lawsuits, Two Rivers in particular is “not afraid Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian, File A sign stands at the entrance of Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla as the sun rises April 2, 2021. Two Rivers and Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, Pendleton, reopened in November for visitation after shutting down visits for four months due to the coronavirus pandemic. enough to change.” “The conversation I have a lot with my clients and people I work with is why?” Herivel said. “Why is it so horrible? Why don’t they learn? They’ve been sued so many times, and I just don’t think they’ve been sued enough. I think they don’t have real con- sequences, and they can brush away these indi- vidual suits like the kinds I do pretty easily. They just don’t follow court orders.” Herivel said in addition to fi ling a majority of her prison cases against Two Rivers, she has had con- tempt of court motions against the prison’s med- ical department for failing to follow the court’s orders, leading to the release of an adult in cus- tody 11 years before their sentence expired. break than it had at the start of the pandemic, according to Ron Miles, supervising executive assistant. “In addition to masking, we’ve done our best ability to maintain social distance or maintain 6 feet of dis- tance between everybody, but the challenge with that is putting 1,700 people into a 15.2 acre location,” he said. “So social distancing is not going to be easy, that’s a just fact of prison life.” Miles credited pre- vious experience with the pandemic as a key factor for controlling the recent outbreak. “Part of it is vaccina- tions, part of its precau- tions we’ve taken since the very beginning and some of it is experience with the COVID pandemic,” Miles said. “No institu- tion, no prison anywhere in the world is equipped for a pandemic, so when one hits, you have to learn what you don’t know. We went through that process and learned what we didn’t know and the second time around we were better pre- pared for that, and vacci- nations played a big role in that.” As of Feb. 8, EOCI had zero active COVID-19 cases, according to the DOC COVID-19 website. ‘We learned the hard way’ A spokesperson for Two Rivers declined to com- ment on the COVID-19 situation at the facility, citing a need to go through the Oregon Department of Corrections for a uni- fi ed response. Two Rivers offi cials did not respond to an emailed list of detailed questions about the out- break at the facility. EOCI saw a milder out- “We learned the hard way, but we did learn,” Miles said. Powder River, Baker City, saw an outbreak of 21 cases by Jan. 29, which fell to eight cases on Feb. 8. Herivel said Powder River is one of the best prisons in Eastern Oregon when it comes to COVID-19 safety. On the other hand, nearly 15% of the Two Rivers adult popula- tion tested positive for COVID-19 on Jan. 23. Miles said EOCI off ers vaccines to the adult in custody population, as well as off ering vaccine booster clinics from time to time for prisoners to keep up to date with the COVID-19 vaccines. TRCI tops prisons for COVID-19 deaths Previous reporting by the East Oregonian through numerous inter- views with lawyers rep- resenting clients at Two Rivers, as well as inmates themselves, had shown a lax regard for COVID-19 safety at Two Rivers. Inmates cited improper mask wearing by staff members and mixing of COVID-19 positive inmates with the general population for work. The number of in-cus- Blue Mountain Community College president says more layoff s likely would like to make future “adjustments” to the col- lege’s collective bargaining agreement with the BMCC faculty union. “We’ve got to jump ahead of it to where we can be a little more fl ex- ible and be able to adjust in a better fashion and hon- estly, it’s going to take an adjustment in the collective bargaining agreement,” he said. “Because, right now, I can’t go and eliminate one instructor in one program and one in another and just adjust the program that way. You have to shut the program down. That’s how it has to be done and I think that’s a really poor approach to business.” Previous rounds of lay- off s and budget cuts have come with pushback from the faculty union, and in a statement, union President Pete Hernberg struck an optimistic tone. “The college’s enroll- ment has begun to stabi- lize — in fact our enroll- ment is doing much better than many other commu- nity colleges around the By ANTONIO SIERRA East Oregonian East Oregonian, File Blue Mountain Community College President Mark Browning said on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2022, the Pendleton-based college is early in its budgeting process, but leaders are anticipating eliminating positions as enrollment continues to fall. to make cuts. Browning attributed the impending reductions to outside factors — a strong job market that was leading many prospective students to the job market instead of community college and lin- gering uncertainty from the coronavirus pandemic. “I can go to Wendy’s and make $18 bucks (per hour),” he said. “In some ways, we’re overperforming.” While the college will outline its cost-cutting strategy in the coming months, Browning said he One solution for oxygen at home, away, and for travel BACKED BY A YEAR-ROUND Introducing the INOGEN ONE – It’s oxygen therapy on your terms TH GU T TE 1 R GU 15 % & 10 % A OFF YOUR ENTIRE PURCHASE * FINANCING THAT FITS YOUR BUDGET! 1 Promo Code: 285 1 Subject to credit approval. Call for details. CALL US TODAY FOR A FREE ESTIMATE + 5 % OFF OFF SENIORS & MILITARY! WE INSTALL YEAR-ROUND! 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His suc- cessor, interim President Connie Green, recom- mended laying off another 11 employees as a part of a 16-job contraction. When the Oregon Department of Corrections restructured its prison education program, the college also was forced RD PENDLETON — Blue Mountain Community College is anticipating employee layoff s for the third year in a row. BMCC President Mark Browning said Thursday, Feb. 10, the college is early in its budgeting process, but leaders are anticipating eliminating positions as enrollment continues to fall. Browning said Blue Mountain’s $44.2 million budget was Browning based on the college enrolling the equiv- alent of 1,000 students. But BMCC’s actual enrollment during the fall and winter terms has been below that number and the college’s administration now is pro- jecting a 3% enrollment decline for next year. Browning said it’s too soon to know how many positions the college needs to cut or where they will © 2020 Inogen, Inc. All rights reserved. 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Although we have a far smaller faculty than we used to, we’re proud of the work that everyone is doing to rebuild enrollment.” FEEL THE SPEED, EVEN AT PEAK TIMES. tody deaths across the state also appears to be increasing, with four reported deaths between Jan. 27 and Jan. 31, though none of those deaths cited COVID-19 as the cause. Since the start of the pan- demic, 45 adults in cus- tody have died after testing positive for COVID-19, according to DOC data. Seventeen of those deaths are from adults in custody at Two Rivers, the highest out of any of the other prisons in Oregon, despite being the third largest prison in Oregon. EOCI, which has a similar popu- lation size of adults in cus- tody, has had four deaths throughout the pandemic, while Powder River has had none. The Department of Cor- rections keeps a spread- sheet of positive tests for COVID-19 on its website, but it has not been updated since Nov. 12, 2021. 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