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.