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Healthcare district officials are urging Del Norte’s public health officer to issue an order stopping all inmate transfers to Pelican Bay State Prison during the COVID-19 emergency.

Despite assurances from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that prisoner travel between its facilities is restricted, Del Norte Healthcare District chairman, Dr. Kevin Caldwell, said Pelican Bay guards have told him otherwise.

“In the last couple weeks, many front-line employees at the prison say, ‘Definitely, there are still prisoners being transferred in,’” Caldwell told his colleagues on Tuesday. “I don’t have the exact numbers. They kept saying many and sometimes they’d say they were put in a 14-day quarantine, maybe.”

This information came from four prison guards who work directly with inmates, Caldwell told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Wednesday. He said he “felt them out on that” when asked if any of those guards would be willing to go on the record. Caldwell said their answer to him was no.

About the actual number of prisoners coming into Pelican Bay, Caldwell said he was told it’s not as many as it used to be, “but they’re still coming.” It’s a gray area as to whether those inmates are being quarantined when they arrive, he said.

“Some say that all of the arriving prisoners go into quarantine and some say, ‘Well, no, just if they have symptoms,’” Caldwell said.

Caldwell and his colleagues have also raised concerns staff at the prison, saying as essential workers they have responsibility to protect themselves from exposure to the novel coronavirus, especially as stay-at-home orders are relaxed.

Del Norte County Public Health Officer Dr. Warren Rehwaldt echoed Caldwell’s concerns, saying that CDCR wasn’t being diligent enough about observing social distancing requirements, particularly for officers traveling with inmates.

“An officer coming down state from an area with more active disease is just as likely to bring something (in),” he said. “And there’s no plan to quarantine those officers we were aware of.”

Rehwaldt agreed to accept the order as crafted by Healthcare District representatives, Dr. Gregory Duncan, a Crescent City orthopedic surgeon, and Dohn Henion, a local attorney. But, he said, he would have to discuss its legality with Del Norte County Counsel Elizabeth Cable and the order may need to be approved by the Board of Supervisors.

CDCR could also challenge the validity of the county order in court, Rehwaldt said. Inmate transfers could potentially continue while the order is being litigated, he said.

The order’s language would be similar to Rehwaldt’s March 29 mandate barring stays at local lodging facilities. But, he pointed out, the order is targeting a state agency.

“Generally the needs of the state outweigh local needs,” he said. “I don’t know how it would play out in court.”

Inmate travel and transfers have been limited to essential movement since March 19, CDCR Press Secretary Dana Simas told the Outpost via email Wednesday. These limitations are still in effect, she said.

“There are essential services inherent in operating a facility that is responsible for the overall care of more than 3,000 individuals, such as medical emergencies, mandatory court appearances or emergency legally-mandated healthcare crisis transfers,” Simas said. “We are taking precautions necessary to increase physical distancing during these transportations, including significantly limiting the number of inmates in-transit per vehicle and have provided staff and inmates at the institution with reusable cloth barrier masks to be worn during transportation.”

However, when it comes to staff, Simas said CDCR has no authority over their movement outside their facilities. They are still subject to the same local and state stay-at-home orders the rest of the population is, she said.

Pelican Bay is currently COVID-19 free, though 11 inmates have been tested as of 1:46 p.m. Wednesday, according to CDCR’s Population COVID-19 Tracking web page.

Systemwide, 207 positive cases have been confirmed and 1,067 inmates tested. One inmate in the state prison system has died, according to CDCR.

There have been no positive COVID-19 cases reported amongst Pelican Bay staff, according to CDCR. A total of 132 CDCR staff members have reported being ill with the virus as of 4:45 p.m. Tuesday.

Del Norte County has had three positive cases of COVID-19 with two recoveries, according to the Public Health Branch. A total of 345 tests have been administered as of 9:38 a.m. Wednesday. The results for 321 have come back negative and 21 are still pending, according to the Public Health Branch.

Other CDCR restrictions to prisoner movement includes quarantining reception center inmates for 14 days, holding in-person parole hearings via videoconferencing and suspending transfers from reception centers through April 22.

As of April 24, inmates leaving CDCR custody for longer than one day to attend court aren’t allowed back until intake has resumed, Dimas told the Outpost last week.

At Tuesday’s Healthcare District meeting, Caldwell gave a timeline of events starting from March 24. This includes Henion’s failed attempt to get a restraining order on March 26 to keep a CDCR bus from bringing inmates to Pelican Bay.

Caldwell argued that the Healthcare District “didn’t get much help from county counsel and definitely not from the judge.”

Henion clarified Caldwell’s statement, saying that the court administrative officer was helpful when he tried to get a temporary restraining order. He said she immediately returned his call and told him what paperwork needed to be filed to make that happen.

Henion said he had spoken with county counsel, who indicated that Rehwaldt needed to consult with her before requesting a restraining order be filed.


“My guess is if he affirmatively makes the request that something’ll happen,” Henion said, referring to Rehwaldt. “I can’t believe the Board of Supervisors wouldn’t want to protect this community from health hazards. That certainly isn’t a position I would want ot espouse if I was an elected official of the Board of Supervisors.”

Though Rehwaldt agreed to take the proposed order to county counsel and, potentially county supervisors, he said he wanted to be careful about burning bridges with officials at Pelican Bay. Inmate transfer into the facility seems to have decreased, he said, and the state is working to take better care of prisoners that are exposed to COVID-19, but they’re not that far along.

Rehwaldt also argued that if that if the state countermands his order, the effort is sunk. He also argued with whether an order curtailing inmate transfers at the prison constitutes an emergency, noting that a month has passed since the Healthcare District began discussing the situation.

Instead, Rehwaldt urged the Healthcare District to consider crafting the order to focus on the transfer of prisoners to a facility in a small community with a small hospital that sees patients from Del Norte and Curry counties.

“When prisoners come to the hospital they bring so many ancillary people and there are security measures that are then required,” he said.

Caldwell still couldn’t get past Simas’s statement Wednesday that CDCR has no authority over staff’s actions when they’re not at work. Drawing a comparison with his own employees at Redwood Medical, Caldwell argued it’s his responsibility to make sure they’re taking the proper social distancing precautions even when they’re not at work.

Caldwell said if a staff member visited their grandchildren at their house and he found out about it, he would likely give the employee a verbal warning. If he found out they didn’t listen and visited their grandchildren at their house a second time, he said he would probably send that employee home.

“We say if you’re not going to follow the rules when you’re outside the office, I can’t stop you, but I can say you can’t come to the office,” Caldwell told the Outpost. “I’m not sure I know what the answer is, but it’s disconcerting that the public information officer (states) ‘We don’t have any control over what they do.’”

Before discussing the COVID-19 response at Pelican Bay, Rehwaldt told Healthcare District officials that the Public Health Branch purchased 20 oxygen concentrators with $25,000 in district dollars.

The Public Health Branch had initially wanted to order 100 oxygen concentrators, but Rehwaldt said he wasn’t optimistic that would be possible, but wanted to get part of that order in.

“I’m less concerned about the situation,” he said, adding that when he made his request to the Healthcare District on March 24, it was early in the emergency. “We had just invoked stay-at-home and shelter in place orders. At the time we were preparing for a worse case scenario, or some version of it, I don’t think I’d go back and try and get 100 units. For now, I’m happy with 20 units.”

Rehwaldt said those oxygen concentrators could be used in future emergencies, such as an earthquake or a tsunami, to help those displaced from their homes.

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