Commentaries on Local Justice by Bill Martin
Sheriff Harder: “they’re safer inside the jail”
County Executive Garnar: “He has done a really good job in preventing the spread of the virus”
There are at least 22 positive COVID-19 tested persons in the jail with a population of approximately 450 persons (COs and incarcerated), and 290 positive cases in the county with a population of 190,000.
Why is it so hard to get basic facts about the extent of COVID-19 infections and their spread in Broome County? Weeks and weeks of protests and public pressure have finally produced a few details and the naming, reluctantly, of a few local hotspots. Prime among these is the jail, as predicted for months by local community organizations and activists. But what is being done? To listen or watch most local media reports we hear only the official line: don’t worry, be happy, all is good!
The local NPR station WSKG has written and broadcast successive defenses of the Sheriff and the jail (e.g. by Natalie Abruzzo here) as has Channel 12 WBNG (e.g. here). Not to be outdone, today the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin published an article by Anthony Borrelli on the front page of the paper. It is as fine a defense as one might imagine of the wonderous work done by the county to make the jail, in the Sheriff’s words, the “safest place“ in the county. (One does wonder how it could be so, given the reportedly 22 COVID-19 cases and the many more–numbers unknown–waiting to be tested if the county ever gets an adequate number of tests.)
The article is a clear counter to the New York Post piece from last week which cited the incarcerated at some length about the spread of infection and the lack of safety in the jail. Of course no person inside was apparently interviewed by Borelli (or WSKG and others), no criticism or critic referenced (JUST’s website and social media list many quotes from persons inside on the coronavirus threat), no physical layout of the jail noted or observed, no oversight body contacted.
Well, the last is understandable since there is no real oversight, neither by the state nor local authorities like the Broome County Health Department even though the jail is now the prime incubator and spreader of COVID-19 locally. Denialism today has a history: for years the county has has turned a blind eye to medical malfeasance and excessive deaths, even as the county and jail have been steadily losing wrongful death and abuse lawsuits.
All these claims can be denied now as in the past. For as reported by Borelli,
“Harder, on Monday, said the inmates’ claims were false.”
That’s all the public needs to know.
This follows the media’s earlier felicitous reporting of the Sheriff’s words that:
“Medically everything is going well, there’s been no infection whatsoever.” (March 24)
and
“[Inmates] are safer inside our facility. They aren’t out in the general public where the disease is prevalent” (March 26)
What do we do now? Even the county has to acknowledge the widespread spread of coronavirus in the jail, while over 300 people move into and out of the building every day. Perhaps someone might ask the County Executive a few pointed questions at his next, closed to the public, press conference? Or really listen to those inside and their families, and investigate in some detail? Denialism now as in the past comes with deadly consequences.
Activists from three community organizations rallied in public on April 14th to demand that local officials release as many persons as possible from the Broome County jail. Filling the parking lot outside the Taste New York store where County Executive Jason Garnar was holding a press conference, members from Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, Citizen Action, and Truth Pharm called on the County Executive Jason Garnar, Sheriff David Harder, and District Attorney Michael Korchak to prevent further COVID infection and death in the jail and across the county.
The county Sheriff responded by deploying a phalanx of officers and patrol cars, with multiple officers demanding protestors leave the site as it was “private property.” Protestors stood their ground, pointing out that this was state property, with the store still open to the public, and the parking lot and sidewalks unimpeded. The protest proceeded surrounded by officers and their vehicles.
Family members spoke at length of loved ones lingering in infected cells and pods at the jail, without sanitizer, masks, and essential, prescribed medicines such as asthma inhalers. Inmates who complain, they told the crowd in their cars, are being threatened with isolation and denial of any contact with family outside by expensive phone or tablet—jail visitation is closed.
The groups’ demands are straightforward, and have been repeated for months:
In reply County Executive Garnar stated, in a line taken from his Sheriff’s public statements: “I don’t have anything to do with it…. I can’t let people out of jail.” The county DA Korchak says the same. As one reporter pointed out at Garnar’s press conference, this is not the case in other counties where Sheriffs, DAs, and County Executives have all acted, individually and often together, to release persons with short sentences, those at high risk for infection and death due to medical conditions, and those incarcerated on technical parole violations like smoking weed or missing a parole meeting. Cases of these conditions were all recounted by family members at the rally.
When pressed on this at the press conference, Garnar said he couldn’t agree with the groups’ demand to “release all prisoners.” This too was a blatant fabrication, as the longstanding list of demands shows –and as a reporter quickly pointed out.
Meanwhile COVID-19 continues its march through the jail, with the Sheriff recently reporting 11 officers and 11 incarcerated persons testing positive. This would be over 20% of existing cases in the county, where little testing has been done.
No one has been able to confirm these numbers, much less answer questions on how many tests in the jail have been done, how many persons have been discharged or hospitalized with the virus, and how many current or recently released persons have died (the Sheriff and local judges have the habit of releasing persons from the jail just prior to hospitalization and death as in the case of Rob Card). When asked for this information by reporters, Garnar said, as he has when asked for information on other county COVID “hotspots” like local nursing homes: “I don’t know.”
The car rally is just one of recent protests pressing the County Executive, the District Attorney (who suffered a phone zap/call in on Monday) and the Sheriff, and the organizations promise to continue their work in the coming weeks.
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A sample of local media coverage may be found here, here, and here.
Social Distancing?
They do it at the Pentagon
President Macron does it in Paris
Chancellor Merkel does it in Berlin
President Ramaphosa does it in Johannesburg
Prime Minister Conte does it in Rome
But in Washington, not so much:
And locally? Officials preach it, but practice it not so much.
Broome County Executive Jason Garnar certainly, repeatedly, appropriately stresses that “if there’s one thing people in Broome County can do is strictly follow social distancing, staying home.” Still, “there is a small percentage of people that refuse to follow the social distancing and just a small percentage of people are going to really make the whole community sick.”
It is puzzling therefore that WNBF produced this photograph as part of its report on Garnar’s press conference last Friday. Here is social distancing as practiced by Garnar, Director of the Health Department Rebecca Kaufman, and Emergency Services Director Michael Ponticiello:
They are not alone. On the previous Friday Garnar was emphatic. We will punish those who don’t follow county COVID-19 orders: “The Sheriff’s office and Broome Security are going to be stepping up their enforcement of emergency orders. No unnecessary travel. You can’t be on playgrounds, athletic fields. There are no gatherings allowed of any size.”
Perhaps Garnar should talk to his Sheriff, who has for weeks been training new recruits without distancing them or giving them any protective equipment, often on public playing fields:
Garnar did announce that he is cancelling the Small Grants Program to save $150,000 to buy protective equipment–perhaps for training recruits? What was cut? Well, the grant gave the grand total of $50k a year ago for health and opioid crisis programming to The Boys and Girls Club, BOCES-Compass Academy High School, Southern Tier Aids Program (STAP) and Truth Pharm.
Perhaps the county might downsize the jail, expanded in 2014 and still staffed for 600, and now holding less than 300 county residents, and costing the county $30 million per year? And yes the staffing has grown steadily, and budget increased by $millions under Garnar. Or might the county cut out the new $700,000 garage for the Sheriff’s toys, including his armored personnel carrier? You know, the one used to suppress Black rebellions in South Africa?
Broome County Sheriff David Harder repeatedly tells the media there is no safer place to be than in his jail. How safe? Flouting COVID-19 state regulations, he puts his own officers and recruits in deadly danger.
We now hear directly from inside that at least two officers have tested positive for COVID-19. At least 9 persons have been pulled from their general population cells, ill and coughing, and been sent to “medical.” And this from only one of many pods.
No county official will confirm or deny these reports. How many persons, staff and incarcerated, have been tested, tested positive, and put in quarantine inside the jail itself? We don’t know. The Sheriff, the County Executive, and the Director of the County Health Department refuse to tell us. Other counties, cities, the state, and the federal government provide answers to these questions, but not local officials.
Denialism has its costs: you don’t protect persons inside, the virus incubates in crowded cells and dormitories and then spreads out into the community as scores of people move in and out of the jail daily, to and from work, to and from court, and through daily releases. Indeed one of the infected COs was reportedly a transport officer.
Denialism puts everyone in danger. Our schools, universities, and playgrounds have been shut down; we must all wash our hands, sanitize, keep our social distance. If you don’t believe the virus is a threat, you don’t do these things. And so our Sheriff in the last two weeks continues to train future officers from across the region in closed rank files, with no protection equipment, on the jail grounds, on public playgrounds nearby. Clusters of persons continue to hang out in his parking lot. Here is the evidence in living color:
The rules don’t apply to the Sheriff. He gets a waiver to putting his people in danger.
This is denied of course. Listen to Broome County Executive Jason Garner at this past Friday’s press conference (April 3, 2020), held in the Sheriff’s building itself:
The Sheriff’s office and Broome Security are going to be stepping up their enforcement of emergency orders… You can’t be on playgrounds, athletic fields. There are no gatherings allowed of any size. These are state emergency orders. They are going to be enforced… We will do anything we can to enforce them. Anything. Because it is a matter of saving lives.”
Indeed: it is a matter of saving lives, and local denialists are putting us all in danger.
Do they really not know? Or why won’t they tell us?
When posed the simplest questions at his daily press conference, Broome County Executive Jason Garnar has a standard answer: “I don’t know”
How many tests are there in Broome County? “I don’t know”
How many ventilators are there in the county? “I don’t know”
How many ICU beds in the county? “I don’t know”
Why don’t we have tests like the 10,000 available in Ithaca? “I don’t know”
What are the profiles of persons who tested positive? “I can’t say”
What is being done to inform and help isolate those who come into contact with persons who have COVID-19 or die from it? We Don’t Know.
The Director of the county’s Health Department can’t seem to help him either. How many persons at the nursing home with so many cases–and how have their families been followed, or tested, or had their contacts tracked? “I don’t know, ask them”
We do know, thanks to press reports from family members, that the second person who died from COVID-19 died without the county informing the family of the death or county officials asking who came into contact with the family or the loved one they lost.
And what of the hundreds of staff, inmates, correctional officers and visitors to the BC jail in March, which had a working and infected correctional officer on duty? We don’t know. Scores of persons outside and inside report no questions asked, no persons followed, only two persons inside apparently tested.
County residents are smart. They can see through these daily evasions and diversions. Look at only a few of the comments on Jason Garnar’s facebook page:
April 1, 2020
Broome County Emergency Services Director Michael A. Ponticiello michael.ponticiello@broomecounty.us
Broome County Health Department Director Rebecca KaufmanBCHealth@broomecounty.us
Dear Directors Ponticiello and Kaufman,
I write to request that you track and inform persons, including myself, who have been in close spaces within the Broome County jail over the last month and who may have come into contact with confirmed COVID-19 cases there.
I make this request after reading local press reports yesterday (March 31, 2020) that quote the Sheriff saying that the correctional officer who has been confirmed as a COVID-19 victim fell ill “two to three” weeks ago. Given that presymptomatic transmission of the virus is known to occur widely, and the CDC estimates an incubation period from 2-14 days, the correctional officer may have been transmitting the virus up to 35 days ago (three weeks plus 14 days), i.e. potentially February 26th. This person may not be the only case as well.
For those living and working inside the facility this is of course of grave concern. I assume persons working in proximity to the officer have been contacted by county officials. This cannot be left to the jail administration, who have failed to provide sanitizer even now (one person inside told me yesterday that sanitizer bottles were in the pods but were all empty and “never refilled”) and who as recently as March 20th were training recruits with no PPE or social distancing practices followed.
It is however those who visited the facility, and who might be missed that concern me. I along with scores of others visited persons through March 20th/23rd in a visiting room with often 30 to 35 persons and a changing group of 4 correctional officers in very close proximity. All of these persons may be at special risk, and can be easily notified that they were exposed so they can self-isolate as needed: with few exceptions the personal data of every person entering the visiting room was entered into a data base.
I thus request that I and others who may have come into contact with the infected officer(s) be notified so we may take appropriate protection. We do not of course need to know the identity of confirmed cases.
Sincerely,
William G Martin
Professor
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