By Joe LoTemplio
Press-Republican
DANNEMORA — Concerned about safety in their workplace, union reps for state correction officers are speaking up around New York, including outside Clinton Correctional Facility.
“We are in dire need of more staff,” New York State Correctional Officers Police Benevolent Association President Michael Powers said at a rally Monday morning outside the Dannemora prison. “More than ever before.”
The State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision says the union has skewed the numbers.
‘LUDICROUS’
Powers, who was flanked by about two dozen union officials, said assaults on officers by inmates have increased 11 percent this year and are up 24 percent since 2010.
He said that in 2010, there were 577 reported inmate-on-staff assaults, and that number is 645 so far for 2014.
This year, the number will climb to 725 if it keeps up its monthly pace, Powers said.
“And we are not even talking about inmate-on-inmate assaults,” he said.
Yet, DOCCS claims there have been no serious assaults in 2014, Power said, which he called ludicrous.
“In the past year alone, we have had officers stabbed, hospitalized with concussions, broken bones and compound fractures,” he said.
DOCCS said in a statement that there have been “two serious injuries from inmate assaults” this year.
‘RELATED TO CLOSURES’
Powers said the rise in assaults appears to coincide with 15 total closures since 2010 — including four this year — which, he said, have created overcrowding, inadequate staffing and re-classification of violent inmates.
The most notable case, Powers said, occurred on Feb. 29, 2012, when an officer was seriously injured at medium-security Bare Hill Correctional Facility in Malone by an inmate who was serving 25 years to life for a double murder.
The inmate’s behavior history in prison clearly showed he never should have been in a medium-security facility, Powers said.
“That officer was a friend of mine, and that was one of the worst days in my 23 years in corrections,” Powers said.
‘ZERO TOLERANCE’
DOCCS spokesperson Linda Foglia said in a statement that that assault “is a classic example of the department’s zero tolerance policy — regardless of where an assault may occur.
Immediate action followed, she said — the inmate was transferred to a maximum-security facility within hours of the incident, along with a “lengthy disciplinary confinement sanction.”
Prosecution resulted in a five-year consecutive assault sentence, she said.
That inmate, she added, had been nearing eligibility for parole, which was why he was approved in 2005 to transfer to a medium-security facility. And he had “showed no violent incidents since a fight in 1995" and had “no history of any assaults on staff throughout his DOCCS stay.”
“While there has been an uptick in the rates of assaults on staff,” DOCCS said in a separate release, " there is no correlation to any of the prison closures.”
‘NO NEW OFFICERS’
Powers said that this year the State Legislature approved the hiring of 275 new officers above and beyond those hired to replace people lost through attrition. But none have been brought aboard.
“If we had more staff, the state would save money because there would be less overtime pay,” Powers said. “And it would be safer.”
“We have to push the administration to fill these (275) positions,” State Sen. Betty Little (R-Queensbury) said at the rally.
‘FOCUS ON SAFETY’
DOCCS said about 80 percent of assaults on staff take place in the state’s 17 maximum-security prisons.
And the department has been meeting regularly since February with union leadership on prison violence “with a focus on staff safety.”
Several initiatives have resulted, DOCCS said, including enhanced training for supervisors on illicit-drug identification and on gangs and unauthorized groups.
”... any attack by an inmate on a staff member that is classified as an assault on a misbehavior report constitutes an assault for purposes of the department’s statistical compilations (regardless of injury),” it said in a release.
“Hence, numerous inmate acts in a prison setting are classified as assaults that would not rise to the level of being charged as criminal assault.”
‘AGGRESSIVE INVESTIGATION’
DOCCS is continuing to review security staffing levels at each facility in the state to develop a three-year plan to enhance security, its release said.
“The safety of our employees is a primary focus of mine,” Acting DOC Commissioner Anthony J. Annucci said in a statement.
“I remind everyone that any act of violence in a state prison will be aggressively investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Powers said the union will continue to fight for more staffing and better working conditions.
“That’s why we are here,” he said of the protests outside the prison in Dannemora and elsewhere.
“We do not feel that we are getting the due respect and recognition that our job titles deserve.”