AI Summary
5 min readOn the morning of August 2nd, 2024, Katrina Cameron was feeding her pet baby lizard, Toby, in her cell at the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). Toby lived in a cup next to her bed. “I consider her just like my child,” Cameron said. “She kept me centered and she gave me a reason to wake up and smile each morning.” Then officers came through ordering everyone out for a search. Cameron tucked Toby into her bra and joined the 160 women filing into the dining hall. What happened next would become known inside the prison as “Operation Breakdown.”
The search and the threat
The women expected a routine search. But through the chow hall windows, they watched officers hauling out bins filled with their belongings—pillows, shoes, clothing, TVs, even mattresses. Everything that didn’t fit in a six-cubic-foot box was thrown away. “It was horrible because I bought that stuff,” one woman said. “People been here for twenty years. You throwing away things that are unreplaceable.” Technically, prisoners are supposed to be given the option to choose what to keep or mail out. That didn’t happen.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (02:34) **Episode Introduction and Setup** - Hosts recap Part One: the tip that led to the story of Ali, who sued a prison officer (Gregory Rodriguez) after being released, and how other women then came forward with complaints.
- 2 (04:08) **Morning Routine Interrupted** - Katrina Cameron describes the start of August 2, 2024: drinking coffee with her girlfriend Christina Wynn and caring for their pet baby lizard, Toby.
- 3 (05:48) **The Search Becomes a Destruction** - Women watch through windows as officers haul out huge bins of their property—clothes, TVs, pillows, mattresses—and throw them away.
- 4 (07:24) **Facing Sergeant Arroyo** - Women try to get answers from Sergeant Isidro Arroyo, but he refuses to speak. Antoinette Yancey, a member of the inmate advisory council, steps forward.
- 5 (10:31) **Tensions Rise in the Chow Hall** - Women are kept in the dining hall for over five hours, hungry and exhausted, with no information.
- 6 (11:57) **The Gas Attack Begins** - Cameron is already having chest pain; Wynn asks officers to help her. Instead, an officer signals “put them down with gas.”
- 7 (16:52) **Cameron and Wynn Are Targeted** - Cameron struggles to walk; Wynn helps her. An officer calls them forward, then a group forces Cameron to the ground and throws a pepper bomb at them.
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Show Notes
August 2nd, 2024, started with a search. More than 150 women rounded up into chow hall as their cells were tossed. What happened next was beyond their imagination. It would be investigated by the feds and the state. Things did not go to plan, or did they? Part 2 of 3.
This episode contains violence against women, sexual assault, and strong language. Please take care while listening.
"We Are Jane Doe" is a new 3-part series from KQED’s Snap Studios. Over three episodes, we trace Ali Prout's dramatic fight for justice and the stunning ripple effects that threaten to upend the system of power and control at one of the largest women’s prisons on earth.
KQED reporters Anna Sussman and Madi Bolaños spent two years investigating this story. They spoke to more than a dozen women incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility, read through hundreds of pages of internal prison documents, obtained leaked audio, and painstakingly watched hours of video footage to reconstruct one of the most complex and devastating use-of-force incidents in state history.
This series was made possible in part with support from The Poynter Institute.
Produced by: Madi Bolaños, Anna Sussman & Sukey Lewis
Featured Story Voices: Aliksandria Prout, Katrina Cameron, Christina Wind, Wisdom Mohammed, Elizabeth Lozano
Editors: Sukey Lewis, Nancy Lopez & Mark Ristich
Fact-checking: Mark Bettancourt
Data Editor: Jeremy Sanchez Rue of UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism
Original Music & Engineering: Dirk Schwarzhoff
Director of Production: Marisa Dodge
Executive Producers: Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich
Season 17 - Episode 44
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