By Howard Frank
Pocono Record
STROUDSBURG, Pa. — Monroe County earlier this year bought devices designed to signal for help when a correction officer has been attacked by an inmate at the jail.
The problem is the devices don’t work properly.
Referred to as an officer duress system, the small black boxes worn by COs signal a central monitoring station in the facility when an officer needs help. That could happen when an officer is ambushed or inmates are fighting and using their radio isn’t possible.
The officers can activate the signal in one of three ways: by pressing a button, pulling on an attached cord or placing the box in a horizontal position — as in when an officer is down.
That third method doesn’t work on the devices Monroe County bought. And that’s a problem if an officer is incapacitated.
“Here’s a scenario,” recently retired Lt. Dan Frable said. “A (correction officer) wears a box properly. Joe Blow whacks him on the head and he collapses. That’s a man down but the system won’t detect them. It could be five minutes before someone might pass by.”
Warden Donna Asure confirmed the man-down activation wasn’t working and she said the supplier came into the facility to see the problem. A representative told her that the units couldn’t be stored on their sides, something the supplier itself wasn’t aware of at the time it sold the system.
Asure said the supplier also told her that COs were accidentally turning the units off when they replaced the batteries, making the man-down position nonfunctional.
The duress system was supposed to be operational around the beginning of the year when new security cameras were put in place.
The small black boxes clip to an officer’s belt or shoulder strap, Frable said. Those clips were breaking when they tried using them. The pull cord to activate the signal was also coming apart, he said. The number and costs of the devices was not immediately available Tuesday.
There’s another problem, Frable said. The devices are programmed for a specific unit. When activated, it reports the location of the officer in that unit.
“If an officer takes a device from unit A and goes to unit B, the system will think he’s in unit B,” he said.
Asure couldn’t be reached to confirm this.
The jail can assign a single correction officer to a unit with 64 inmates, according to Correction Officer Joe Dougher. The officers are badly outnumbered, making the duress system a safety issue for officers, he said.