It s Official! Sheriff s Office Nursing Director Becomes a U.S. Citizen
With Tomas Navarro, Director of Nursing,(center) are (l-r) Laura Yager, Director of Correctional Health and Human Services; Lt. Colonel Mark Sites; Sheriff Stacey Kincaid; Major Tony Shobe; Lt. Colonel JJ Snyder; and Bingo Cunanan, Correctional Health Services Administrator.
May 19, 2021
I am incredibly happy about it, “said Fairfax County Sheriff’s Office Director of Nursing Tomas Navarro on the momentous occasion of becoming a United States citizen this week. Navarro came to this country from Mexico when he was 8 years old. “I have always considered myself an American, but now it is official.”
SHARE:
Soon after prisoners in New York correctional facilities sued Gov. Andrew Cuomo and won, they began receiving hard-won COVID-19 vaccinations.
The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision wrote in a statement to City & State that it began offering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to all incarcerated individuals on April 6. As of mid-April, 894 incarcerated individuals and 23 staff members had been vaccinated through this effort.
But then those vaccinations stopped, as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was put on pause by the federal government on April 13. The department had been using the Moderna vaccine since February.
Getting shots in the arms of inmates to begin with, however, has been a battle. On March 30, a judge ordered the state to administer COVID-19 vaccines to prisoners after a lawsuit from a coalition of advocates argued that Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had unfairly denied prisoners access to the vaccine.
Print
The inmates huddled near the front or lingered on the bunk beds lining both sides of their narrow, crowded dorm at the Men’s Central Jail, listening as sheriff’s Lt. Dwight Miley and nurse practitioner Marissa Negrete offered them COVID-19 vaccinations and answered their questions.
Those who wanted the vaccine should line up at the door, Miley and Negrete said. They’d be taken into a short, cramped hallway where medical workers waited with loaded syringes.
The shot wasn’t mandatory, Miley said, but he encouraged them to get it by dangling a carrot that might seem odd to someone on the outside: Being vaccinated would help them get transferred more quickly to state prison.
The sight of an officer holding his knee on George Floyd s neck for more than nine minutes until he died from asphyxiation triggered nationwide protests in 2020.
It wasn t the first time there was national outrage about a Black American being killed by police (see: Stephon Clark, Philando Castile, Freddie Gray, the list goes on).
But it
was the first time that the talk of police reform moved beyond incremental steps to include widespread, mainstreamdiscussions about foundational change.
Support for LAist comes from
Suddenly, officials were talking about ideas once considered beyond the pale like defunding police departments and ending qualified immunity for officers.
Despite Working In Hotspots, NY Correctional Officers Fall Behind With COVID Vaccines gothamist.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from gothamist.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.