The Alameda County Sheriff’s Department in California has earned itself a reputation for heavy-handed responses to Occupy Oakland. Since Tuesday, allegations of abusive treatment by officers have escalated as arrestees detained during Saturday’s mass Occupy actions in Oakland were released after up to three-day stints in holding cells at the department’s Santa Rita Jail.
Salon has received three firsthand accounts, corroborated by reports from Occupy Oakland’s media team and the National Lawyers Guild, that ill and injured inmates were denied medication including anti-retroviral treatments for HIV-positive detainees.
“I am a person living with HIV and I was held for over 30 hours in Santa Rita and denied my prescription medications on multiple occasions by jail staff,” one 28-year-old arrestee told Salon via email, asking to remain anonymous as his family are currently unaware of his HIV status. “I know three others with HIV and many others with psychiatric prescriptions who were also held without being given their meds,” he added.
Carey Lamprecht of the National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter and Occupy Legal collective confirmed that “two HIV positive individuals were held without access to medication for over two days at Santa Rita jail.” Lamprecht added that one man who usually takes anti-retroviral drugs every four to six hours went without a dose for over two days and was unable to access a legal counsel for more than a day while detained, as the large number of arrestees were constantly moved around the jail.
Different individuals living with HIV face different risks from missing doses, depending on their T-Cell, viral load counts, anti-retroviral therapy regimens and other factors. The risk, especially for individuals with low T-Cell counts is that the virus mutates rapidly and can develop resistance to medication if doses are inconsistent. The young man who spoke to Salon said that although his T-cell counts are “in the healthy range … none of the guards or medical staff ascertained any of this information” to determine the relative risks of detainees going without medication.
“It felt like we had disappeared. Deputies often didn’t know where individuals were and wandered from cell block to cell block looking for individuals to process,” the man said. “On multiple occasions, my cell block mic checked the guards and led chants, demanding in one voice medicine, food, and other necessities like toilet paper and maxi pads.”
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