OFF PAGE ONE
Saturday, January 9, 2021
East Oregonian
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TRCI: Many blame prison staff for bringing the virus in
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not have current active cases.
In all, 2,690 adults in
custody and 679 staff have
reportedly tested positive in
Oregon, and 26 inmates who
contracted COVID-19 have
died, according to the ODOC.
“It seems like the (depart-
ment of corrections) is just
really reactive,” Tara Herivel,
a Portland-based attorney
with more than 20 clients at
TRCI, said. “They wait until
the problem has taken over, no
matter how predictable it is or
not. Then when pressures are
hard enough, they take action,
whether adequate or not. They
wait in a reactive kind of posi-
tion, and it is just fatal in these
circumstances.”
Some inmates at TRCI
say they believe infection is
stemming from prison work-
places, like the laundry unit
or kitchen, where they say
inmates from quarantined
units are mixing with those
who aren’t quarantined.
“Don’t get me wrong, I
like my job, I like working,”
said Troy Marin, an inmate at
TRCI who works in the laun-
dry unit. “But I don’t want my
life being in jeopardy either.”
Inmates say that if they
refuse to go to work, they
will face retaliation by
being placed in “the hole”
— a segregated unit where
inmates are sent when they
misbehave.
Officials from the ODOC
said, “It is impossible to
definitively say what may
have caused or exacerbated
the outbreak at TRCI.” They
said that health and safety
measures like sanitization,
mask wearing and social
distancing are taking place to
their “best ability.”
In response to a list of
questions from the EO news-
room, the officials said,
“ODOC cannot comment on
specific allegations as they are
subject to pending litigation in
several cases.”
However, prison officials
pointed out that earlier this
week, a two-day trial before
the Umatilla County Circuit
Court regarding similar alle-
gations resulted in a judge
ruling the state “has not
been deliberately indiffer-
ent to the COVID-19 condi-
tions at TRCI, and that on
the contrary, ODOC has
invested significant resources
and energy into fighting and
preventing the spread of
COVID-19 within the insti-
tution.”
East Oregonian, File
Between Dec. 10 and Dec. 18, 2020, 47 additional inmates and six staff at Two Rivers Correctional Institution tested positive
for COVID-19.
When it began
On Dec. 10, after two
prison staff tested posi-
tive a week before, correc-
tions staff transferred 10
COVID-19-positive inmates
from Deer Ridge Correc-
tional Institution in Madras to
the medical isolation unit at
Two Rivers, as first reported
by Oregon Public Broadcast-
ing. At the time of the transfer,
Deer Ridge had more than 130
from a Tier-4 prison to
another prison, and those
people haven’t been tested
but it turns out they’re posi-
tive, you are opening up a
whole bunch of people to pain,
suffering and possibly death,”
Herivel said.
Officials said in the email
that they were following
transfer protocol.
On Dec. 16, a power
outage caused by two wires
ered causing trouble and
getting himself put into “the
hole” just to be in a cell with
light. “You can’t read or you
can’t do anything. You’re just
laying there. Our cells aren’t
big enough for two people to
get up and move around at the
same time.”
The 64-year-old Roof, a
Type-2 diabetic, said inmates
around him were receiv-
ing frozen, rancid meat, and
in Washington, D.C., at the
Rainey Center, and has a client
at TRCI, said she believes the
power outage exacerbated
the COVID-19 outbreak. Her
client, Craig Dawson, filed a
claim against TRCI’s former
superintendent, Tyler Blewett,
claiming the prison does not
follow guidelines from the
Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
Blewett resigned as super-
“THERE’S NO REASON FOR THEM TO BE TREATED LIKE
THAT. THEY’RE NOT ANIMALS. ONE OF THEM IS MY SON.”
— Cheryl Baker, mother of TRCI inmate Brandon Baker
adults in custody with active
cases.
Between Dec. 10 and
Dec. 18, 2020, 47 additional
inmates and six staff at TRCI
tested positive.
Herivel said there are
department of corrections
policies against transferring
inmates in and out of Tier-4
prisons — the highest level
of quarantine based on cases
at an individual prison. She
said she believes the trans-
fers are done when prisons
run out of space for medical
treatment and the institution
is overcome by the spread of
disease, “and this appears to
have happened at TRCI,” she
said.
“If you transfer people
shorting and exploding in a
conduit underground after
20 years of degradation left
an area where more than 600
inmates reside in the pitch
black, according to officials
and sources. Several days
later, inmates were provided
small, battery-powered lights
to illuminate their cells, just
as infection was ramping up
in the prison.
For more than a week,
inmates were released from
their cells for about an hour
a day to use the phone and
shower. Aside from that —
darkness.
“It’s weird, because you
lose your sense of what’s
going on,” said Frank Roof, an
inmate, who added he consid-
their diet mostly consisted of
peanut butter and jelly sand-
wiches, cookies and some
fruit. Finally, a few days
after the outage, they began
to receive warm food in the
form of a 3-ounce scoop of
oatmeal, he said. Roof said the
meals and inability to leave
his cell left his blood sugar
“out of control.”
Roof added that condi-
tions during the power outage
caused tensions to rise. Offi-
cers told him fights were
breaking out and two staff
had been assaulted due to the
anger caused by the power
outage, Roof said in Decem-
ber.
Meghan Bishop, an
Oregon attorney who works
intendent of the prison on
Dec. 15, 2020, after serving
in the position for a year. The
prison declined to provide
any information about why
Blewett resigned.
‘There’s no reason for
them to be treated like
that’
Bishop said her client has
told her the movement of
inmates to the showers and
phone was disorganized and
crowded, making it easier
for the virus to spread. And
when Dawson emailed her
about correctional officers not
wearing personal protective
equipment while doing cell
searches, he was put in “the
hole,” she said.
Bishop said Dawson is
medically vulnerable to
COVID-19 due to multiple
heart attacks, lung damage
from pneumonia and high
blood pressure. She said he
told her he got food poison-
ing from eating expired foods
during the outbreak.
“What is going on in pris-
ons across the state is a result
of choices,” she said. “The
prison system chose not to
implement CDC guidelines.
They chose to not come down
hard on (correctional officers)
for not wearing masks. They
chose not to implement mass
testing.”
Bishop said the way pris-
ons around Oregon are
handling the outbreak could
have long-standing effects.
“By not treating people
who are incarcerated with
dignity, by feeding them
expired food, by locking them
up 23 hours a day, by retali-
ating against them because
they are seeing injustices
within the prison walls, we
are setting them up for failure
once they’re released,” she
said. “And what we’re seeing
with (prisons in Oregon) due
to COVID is people are now
seeing the reality of what
incarceration is. This has been
going on for decades.”
Sources in nearly every
interview with the East
Oregonian said they blame
prison staff for bringing the
virus into TRCI, emphasiz-
ing the fact that it is impossi-
ble for inmates to go out and
bring the virus in.
Prison officials said “all
people entering a DOC
institution are screened for
COVID-19,” adding staff take
employees’ temperatures and
ask about symptoms relating
to the coronavirus.
“DOC has brought institu-
tion outbreaks under control
at other prisons and we will
do it again thanks to the hard
work and diligence of employ-
ees and AICs,” the officials
said.
Friends and families
of inmates are doubtful,
dismayed, and are calling
on the prison to implement
stricter guidelines to keep
their loved ones safe.
“I’m angry. I’m past
concerned. I’m angry,” said
Cheryl Baker, Brandon
Baker’s mother, who said she
hadn’t seen her son in person
for nearly a year due to the
virus. “There’s no reason for
them to be treated like that.
They’re not animals. One of
them is my son.”
Insurrection: Greater Hermiston Republican Women declined comment
Continued from Page A1
around the doors. Lockwood
and others looking down on
the scene from above had not
been able to be evacuated at
the same time as lawmakers on
the floor, but eventually they
were evacuated as well.
K nowing that some
protesters were caught on
film physically assaulting
members of the media in the
past year, including in videos
of the Jan. 6 protest that later
emerged, Lockwood said he
was concerned for his safety if
protesters breached the undis-
closed location they were
evacuated to.
“I took off my tie. I took off
my suit jacket. I tucked away
my press IDs, I figured I would
be more likely to blend in that
way,” he said.
He said he was grateful for
many he encountered during
the experience, including the
Capitol Police and congres-
sional staffers who led people
to safety, and a lawmaker who
offered him a spare COVID-
19 mask when he realized he
had lost his while donning one
of the gas masks everyone was
instructed to pull from under
their seat in the chamber.
When the building was
eventually cleared and
Congress returned to work,
Lockwood did too. When he
finished covering the certifica-
tion of the election results and
left, it was 3:45 a.m. on Thurs-
day, Jan. 7, and he realized,
due to the curfew imposed by
the mayor, that it wasn’t possi-
ble for him to catch a taxi or
Uber. So he waited until the
subway reopened and returned
home after 6 a.m. to be greeted
by his very concerned dog.
Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press
Supporters of President Donald Trump climb the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol on Wednes-
day, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington.
Lockwood got his first
interest in politics as a 13-year-
old in Hermiston, when he
had a long conversation with
prominent Hermiston resident
stories for the East Oregonian
during his high school years
for his first taste of journalism.
“I helped cover the game
when Hermiston beat Pend-
attendance at inaugurations,
State of the Union addresses,
and an interview with Pres-
ident Donald Trump in the
Oval Office. Second only to
“I TOOK OFF MY TIE. I TOOK OFF MY SUIT JACKET. I
TUCKED AWAY MY PRESS IDS, I FIGURED I WOULD BE
MORE LIKELY TO BLEND IN THAT WAY.”
— Frank E. Lockwood, correspondent for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Joe Burns about the results
of the 1980 election when
Ronald Reagan beat incum-
bent Jimmy Carter for the
presidency. His father, Frank
Lockwood Sr., is a former
Hermiston Herald reporter,
and Lockwood Jr. wrote sports
leton (at football) for the first
time in living memory,” he
said.
Since graduating and leav-
ing Hermiston, he said his
experiences as a journalist
in Washington, D.C., have
often felt surreal, including
his experience being in D.C.
on Sept. 11, 2001, however, he
said Jan. 6, 2021, will always
be a particularly memorable
day.
Local reaction
Watching the news from
his home in Pendleton, Mark
Petersen, the chair of the
Umatilla County Democratic
Party, recalled watching stag-
ings of the French Revolution
on TV, but this time the setting
was more familiar.
“They weren’t soldiers,” he
said. “They were Americans.”
The Greater Hermiston
Republican Women organized
a small “Stop the Steal” rally
in Pendleton on Jan. 6, but the
group declined to comment
via Facebook Messenger.
“I have no say on the
events that occurred in Wash-
ington,” a member wrote. “I
wasn’t there. Thank you for
the opportunity God Bless.”
The mother of Suni
Danforth, the chair of the
Umatilla County Republican
Party, answered her home
phone and said Danforth was
out of the area and wouldn’t
be available until Monday,
Jan. 11.
After the breach ended,
some conservatives spread
a baseless conspiracy theory
that left-wing agitators had
posed as pro-Trump protesters
to initiate the riot and smear
the president.
Another common argu-
ment was that liberals and the
media were overly focused
on the breach, while playing
down the violence and prop-
erty destruction in Portland
and other major cities during
Black Lives Matter protests.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz,
R-Ontario, brought up Port-
land when a reporter from
The Oregonian asked him if
he was surprised about the
breach.
“(I’d) point out the fail-
ure of those in Portland to
appropriately manage the 100
days of burnings and riots
and property destruction that
probably convinced a lot of
people that law enforcement
didn’t exist anymore in big
cities and encouraged this
kind of activity,” he said in
the Jan. 6 interview.
According to The Orego-
nian, Bentz would go on to
join a failed attempt to throw
out the votes from Penn-
sylvania, although he later
acknowledged Biden as the
president-elect.
Pendleton activist Briana
Spencer asserted the Black
Lives Matter protests and
Capitol breach were incompa-
rable. She referred to a statis-
tic from the Armed Conflict
Location & Event Data Proj-
ect that showed that more than
93% of Black Lives Matter
protests were peaceful, while
the Jan. 6 events involved
armed mobs forcing their way
into a government building.
“The BIPOC (Black,
Indigenous, people of color)
community was not surprised
by this,” she said.
Spencer noted the vast
disparity in how many people
were arrested in the breach in
comparison to the Black Lives
Matter protests, with some
police even posing for pictures
with members of the mob.
She added that she didn’t
advocate for a more violent
response from police in the
Capitol breach, just a less
violent approach when police
deal with people of color.
Petersen said Bentz and
Trump were complicit in incit-
ing the riot, but he didn’t know
how the country would come
together after this.
“I don’t have any answers,”
he said.