English subtitles for clip: File:COVID-19 burials on Hart Island.webm

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My name is Vincent Mingalone,

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New York City resident my whole life,
born and raised in Manhattan, and …

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I had to do a little six months on Rikers Island for disobeying a court order,

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and I was fortunate enough to be assigned to the Hart Island detail.

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We'd board the boat, crossover about 15 minute ride to Hart Island.

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Then our daily routine is:

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We would just check in,

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go over the list of what we’re gonna accomplish those days,

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because we only buried bodies one day a week which is Thursdays.

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The Medical Examiner’s office their truck would come aboard the boat with us, and 

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the officers did some paper work and then we all met at the pit, the burial site, 

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and it was anywhere from, [Hesitates] I want to say the least we did was 11 and the heaviest day I did about about 24 burials.

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What they preferred me doing was

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I would work on the truck…

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Basically, I would pass the bodies out,

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I would take the wax crayon, write the name of the deceased on the side of the box,

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then we had a wood router and, you know,

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I would inscribe the plot that was actually buried in,

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whether it was B26-A or whatever the case may be,

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and then I would pass the body off the truck to three inmates on the bottom.

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They would take that body and the box

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and they would pass it to three inmates that were in the pit.

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And basically we would just pass the boxes down and

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then they would stack ’em three high and

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we continued the process till the truck was empty.

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Then, at that point, the machine would come:

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It was a backhoe, and

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it would dump the sand.

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And we would just rake it in, in-between the boxes, around the sides and everything.

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We did a full layer of that about, maybe, a foot above the top box,

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and then came the actual soil.

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And, same thing, we would rake it in, smooth it all out,

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and then we would pack everything with plyboards on the sides when we were finished.

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And we would leave the pit until next week’s burial.

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The detail only consisted of about six of us for the five months I was doing it.

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Towards the end though, they got about 20 of us

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and we were all known as the “Hart Island crew”,

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we all pretty much had the same housing unit,

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and we were all kept in that 6 building, so that we could be removed daily to go to Hart Island.

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And, at that point, instead of taking the van over every day

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they took a big bus, because it was about 18 to 20 of us.

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And we were told that this is how it’s gonna be, and…

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I did about, maybe, three weeks of that.

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Then it was time for me to be released the following week,

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so they shipped me back to a different building.

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And finally I went home, so that’s how I left off.

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And, I’m gonna say, it was February 18th, it was when I got released.

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They crew that I did work with

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they were committed, dedicated, we got the job done.

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There was no argument over, you know, this is harder than that, or,

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you know, you catch the body, you stack them, and,

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we took turns, we did what we had to do and we got them all done.

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I must say, you know, we did take pride in what we did,

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and we knew we were the only ones there for these people.

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And, you know, it just always intrigued me that there’s so many stories like…

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We didn’t know this person, we didn’t see this person, they were inside of a box.

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All we know is a name and a date of death, but, you know,

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we always wondered: “Did this person serve me coffee?”

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“Was this person a janitor in a building?” Or, you know,

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“What did this person do in life that they,” you know, “ultimately wound up here <i>alone</i>?” So,

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you know, we did the best we could, with dignity, and,

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you know, we handled the bodies carefully.

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You know, it was a labor job, don’t get me wrong, but,

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you know, at the same time Captain Thompson was on top of us.

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You know: Don’t drop them, don’t slam them, don’t throw them, and…

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you know, we carried them gently. We did our job.

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And he always rewarded us.

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So he said, you know, “Good job, guys!”, you know,

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“This was a good day.” And we did what we had to do.

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My concern is, I understand they released a lot of sentenced inmates, so,

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you know, I don’t know if they gonna be able to get the inmate labor that they had before,

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because even when it was a full house and there was plenty of inmates to do the job

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a lot didn’t volunteer for that. They thought it was goolish,

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they thought it was, you know, a dirty job, and believe it or not,

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it was actually one of the lower paying jobs, as opposed to, maybe,

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working the car wash or cleaning, or any of the other outside clearance jobs.

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So a lot of people didn’t want that job. They didn’t wanna do that detail.

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And now, I think, it’s gonna be slim pickings, because a lot of inmates for,

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you know, minor crimes such I had, they’ve all been released because of this pandemic.