‘SHUT THIS
Protesters rally at Sunset Park
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COURIER L 2 IFE, DECEMBER 11-17, 2020
BY ROSE ADAMS
Dozens of protesters gathered
outside a Sunset Park
prison on Dec. 4 to decry the
conditions inside the facility,
which has seen a spike in
COVID-19 cases and periodic
heat and hot water outages
over the last week, protesters
said.
“We’re demanding to free
anyone in the facility who’s
immunocompromised,” said
Eve, a protester with the activist
group Sunset Park Popular
Assembly, who did not
give her last name.
COVID-19 cases at Metropolitan
Detention Center
(MDC), located on 29th
Street by Third Avenue, have
surged in the last week, with
the prison reporting 62 confi
rmed cases among inmates
on Nov. 7.
Most of the cases come
from a seventh fl oor unit
within the jail, where 55 inmates
tested positive last
week, the Daily News reported.
The Bureau of Prisons
website says that six employees
have tested positive
for the virus, although the
Daily News reported that 49
had tested positive as of last
week.
Before the outbreak,
COVID-19 rates at the 1,298-inmate
jail have remained low
— though insiders say that’s
because offi cials don’t conduct
frequent testing.
Gregory Cooper, a former
inmate who was granted compassionate
release on April 30,
told Brooklyn Paper in June
that at least a dozen of the 80
inmates in his unit showed
symptoms of COVID-19 before
he was released, and that
the prison did not enforce adequate
social distancing measures
in the little time inmates
were allowed to leave
their cells.
“There is no social distancing,”
Cooper said. “When
they let everybody out for the
30 minutes, everybody is congregating,
everybody is talking.”
To reduce the spread of the
virus, prison offi cials have
instituted “lockdown” measures
that protesters derided
as inhumane.
In addition to prohibiting
visits from relatives or lawyers,
the new rules dramatically
reduce the amount of
time detainees get outside
their cells, limiting their
movement to three showers
per week, commissary, three
showers per week, and phone
calls, according to the Bureau
of Prisons.
“They’re basically in their
cells 23 hours a day,” said
Eve, who added that inmates
usually spend most of their
days outside the enclosures.
“The lockdown conditions
are excessive, and it seems
like they’re trying to establish
a new normal.”
The outbreak come as
many inmates have experienced
occasional hot water
and heat outages over
the past few weeks, organizers
with Sunset Park Popular
Assembly said. Offi cials
reportedly give the inmates
blankets when their heat is
turned off, but the additional
layer doesn’t shield detainees
from the cold, activists said.
“It seems like different
units at different times are
not receiving heat or hot water,”
said Shauna Fitzgerald,
who attended the Dec. 4 protest
with Sunset Park Popular
Assembly, who noted that
the facility is usually uncomfortably
cold. “They actually
blast a lot of AC. It seems
that’s what the norm is.”
The Board of Prisons did
not respond to questions
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