ST. LOUIS — "I know jail is not supposed to be a place of fun and happiness, but they still have rights," a St. Louis woman said.
She asked 5 On Your Side to protect her identity but said her boyfriend is an inmate at the City Justice Center. When inmates started smashing windows on the fourth floor and throwing furniture to the ground below, she was on the phone with him.
"He was like, 'They mad. They saying that we not getting treated right,'" she said.
The woman said her boyfriend wasn't convicted of a crime that carries much more time in the facility, and he wasn't one of the 117 inmates involved with the revolt. However, she said he started calling her with concerns shortly after he was taken in last fall.
"I just heard him going down in depression," she said. "He barely talks to people. He hasn't seen anybody. If you order commissary, they're not getting it on time. They're getting it weeks later."
She also said he told her he was afraid he would catch COVID-19 in the facility.
"He said, 'They don't care. They just throw us in the pods and say deal with it,'" she said.
Activists and elected officials have spoken out about the conditions at the jail and the treatment of the inmates since the riot on Saturday.
Though the woman said she was initially shocked to receive the call from her boyfriend so early in the morning, she was not surprised that the inmates rioted.
Also not surprised, a former correctional officer who also asked to be kept anonymous.
"I was not surprised at all," they said.
The former officer worked for the city's corrections department for nearly 12 years and worked in both the Justice Center and the Workhouse.
However, their lack of surprise is not because of the conditions inside of the jail. It's because of the people who oversee it.
"The whole entire administration," they said. "It's all downhill from there."
The former officer said the restrictions on officers are so strict that they are unable to enforce rules and perform their jobs, which is how they believe the riot was able to happen.
"They give them any and everything they want," they said. "The minute they tell them 'no', what do they do? They act like a little kid, and they throw a temper tantrum."
The officer said the lack of ability to enforce order in the jails, the city's longtime policy on only hiring officers who live in the city (which voters recently got rid of) and other conditions lead to high turnover which then leads to officers without proper training and experience working in the jails. They said that's also a problem.
When asked about allegations of inhumane conditions and the potential for exposure to COVID-19, they said they don't believe those issues led to the riot.
"I can honestly tell you, even though I've been gone since 2019, that's the ultimate lie," they said.
The former officer still has close ties to people who work in the jail, and she said they've told her that inmates who tested positive for COVID-19 were separated from the rest of the people in the jail. They also said, based on their experience, it's unlikely prisoners weren't being fed. Though, they did not deny allegations about lack of visitors or time out of their cells.
"If they wasn't eating or getting meds or anything, why didn't their signs say that," they asked. "They were saying 'free this person' and they had gang signs up."
While both people said they were ultimately surprised about what happened Saturday morning, they have very different ideas about what led up to it.
