Prison guard’s COVID death resulted from transfer of infected inmates, family alleges

The family of a San Quentin prison guard who died of COVID-19 claim in a recently filed lawsuit that his death, along with 28 others, resulted from the botched transfer of infected inmates from a Southern California prison in May 2020. Gilbert Polanco, a 55-year-old father of two, died less than three months after a bus, dubbed “the beast” by San Quentin inmates, arrived at the prison with 121 inmates from the outbreak-ridden California Institution for Men at Chino, according to the federal lawsuit filed against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. More than 2,200 inmates and 490 staff at San Quentin would be infected in what a state inspector general called “a public health disaster.” The inspector general concluded that state prison officials hastily transferred the infected inmates despite the warnings of frontline healthcare workers. Polanco’s family, friends, and colleagues.” The transfer came after officials decided to move the inmates from Chino prison’s barracks-style housing, where the virus had infected more than 600 inmates and killed nine. “They violated basic common sense like testing the Chino inmates before moving them to San Quentin and quarantining them from the rest of the population upon arrival.” Cal-OSHA found state prison officials guilty of numerous serious workplace safety violations, many of them willful.