by Judy Arnold, Ruth Blizard, Rozann Greco, William Martin, on Binghamton Bridge
Akshar is a committed, pro-life, anti-abortion politician. As Sheriff will he take responsibility for enforcing NY state laws affirming reproductive rights?
Akshar supports, and will fund, more police in schools. As Senator he proposed legislation for a retired police officer in every school, estimated to cost $200 million. This, despite the local lesson of the Broome County school officer who failed to act on many warning signs about guns and violence of the Susquehanna Valley High School student who shot 13 Black persons in Buffalo.
Akshar will continue to block public reporting of officer wrongdoing. He has repeatedly sought to roll back the state law which requires police and sheriff departments to open up disciplinary records for inspection. He will continue Sheriff Harder’s refusal to release deputy records as required by the state—including past investigations of his own behavior while a Deputy.
Akshar worked for Sheriff Harder for thirteen years as a Deputy and Undersheriff, supporting his regime that resulted in 13 deaths in the jail, state investigations, and several lost lawsuits for wrongful deaths (e.g. 2011, 2015). No comment from Akshar then or now.
Akshar proclaimed in 2018, “Sheriff, you have my unwavering commitment to do everything in my power to ensure that you remain the Broome County Sheriff”–until this year, when Akshar decided to run to replace Harder – Interesting that Harder supports Akshar’s opponent.
Akshar has worked, past and present, to increase funding for the police and jail despite falling crime and decreasing population locally. It now costs over $100,000/year to keep someone in the BC Jail, awaiting trial, double the cost of 5 years ago. No problem here for Akshar. We can look forward to further increases.
Akshar has consistently opposed any criminal justice reforms that would reduce incarceration in general or decrease the racial disparities in local policing, prosecution and incarceration. He would roll back bail reform for even the most minor, non-violent crimes, while wealthy business men and politicians wait for trial at home (e.g. Adam Weitsman, Thomas Libous, Mathew Libous…).
In an interview with USA Today, Broome County District Attorney Michael Korchak defended his inaction over white supremacist threats. It was up to the Susquehanna Valley school and the State Police, and not his office he said, to act on the mass shooting threats made by student Payton Gendron:
“The school did what they were supposed to do and called state police” Korchak said. “And state police did what they were supposed to do and referred him for a mental health evaluation”… “What more could have been done?”
Indeed. What more?
There is more than a bit of white-washing going on here.
Perhaps Korchak has forgotten that he funds retired police officers’ jobs in schools all around Broome County—including in the Susquehanna School District where a former Vestal Police officer and SWAT team leader has worked for 12 years as a school resource officer. What does all this policing and surveillance directed by his office produce?
Korchak is not alone for policing Broome’s schools is big business. Last December Broome County Sheriff Harder, who runs his own school officers, responded to reports of social media threats by reassuring the public and press that there was “no evidence” behind the rumors. Local school officials did the same.
People and the press need to ask questions.
What do these police officers patrolling schools do, day in and day out? Perhaps they don’t hear or report violent threats from within the school? Do they not know when the State Police are investigating their students? Or perhaps they are incapable of hearing, much less acting on, violent racist threats?
Might their training and experience in all-white police forces be a factor?
Or are they simply representing and enforcing the county’s racialized record of arrests, prosecution, and incarceration?
The Color of Justice Broome County Black Incarceration Rate: 2,076 Broome County white incarceration rate: 292 NYS white incarceration rate: 158 NYS Black Incarceration Rate: 1,123
Or might racist behavior be the norm and legitimized? Reports from inside the county jail are especially grim, as in one man’s statement to a local activist organization that
“I’ve been called Nxxxx, monkey, and other degrading names… when we speak up we get punished by being put in the Box… animals get treated better than Broome County inmates.”
Its a common report by incarcerated Black persons. A licensed clinical psychologist with over 25 years of experience in juvenile correctional settings testified in a recent lawsuit that “youth spoke of the Correctional Officers carrying batons they used to beat the kids; they reported that the COs refer to the baton as their ‘nxxx beaters’.” The Sheriff and County lost that lawsuit.
Another ongoing lawsuit recounts how a local teenager was stripped and beaten while being told “do what you’re told, N-word”).
Might it be that constant protests and lawsuits against overtly racist behavior by city, county, and university police and schools need to be recognized and pursued?
And these are only a sample of the cases that have been publicly reported in the press and to county legislators, the NYS Attorney General’s office, and elected officials.
***
There is a lesson here that local and state officials are working mightily to cover up: the problem of racism cannot be isolated to “exceptional” or “evil” individuals, it is systemic, reproduced daily by the forces and administrations of the city, county, and state.
On Violence in Broome County: Why is gun violence increasing? And crime not?
That’s a paradox that you won’t hear from local media or elected officials. The stories they bleat at us repeat a fearful line: violent crime is escalating and threatens us all, daily. And people across the county and state clearly have a heightened fear of crime as a result. Sheriffs, police chiefs, and elected officials now amplify this fear to demand we rollback criminal justice reforms and refill emptying jails and prisons. But have criminal justice reforms had this effect, and what do we do?
Sheriff Harder and Regional Sheriffs vs. Reforms
Bail reforms passed in 2019 eliminated bail for most misdemeanor and non-violent charges. Opponents propose new legislation to grant judges more autonomous power to incarcerate “dangerous” persons and imprison those with substance use and mental health problems. State Senator Frederick Akshar and past Binghamton Mayor Richard David have launched a statewide campaign towards this end, as have current Sheriff David Harder and regional Sheriffs.
Rolling back reforms would be accompanied by more funding for police, prosecution, and incarceration. New York’s New Mayor Adams and President Biden agree. Governor Hochul and conservative Democrats, including Broome County Executive Jason Garnar, have conceded and proposed their own 10 point program to rollback recent reforms.
None of these advocates for more incarceration have produced systematic evidence or analysis of the impact of reform to support their legislative proposals. Simply put, the facts and data we have don’t match these fearful visions—as suggested by the seeming paradox between fears of rising crime and actual crime rates. To unpack these contradictions we need to take a straightforward look at crime and violence.
Crime? What Crime?
Start with the crime situation. New York State statistics show that index (serious) crime rates for Broome County have steadily declined over the last four decades and actually fell significantly from 2017 to 2020 (2021 county figures are not yet released).
Source: NYS, Division of Criminal Justice Services
The apex violent crime, murder, is rare in Broome County, averaging but five a year over the last thirty years, including the last five years. Robbery, property theft, burglaries, and motor vehicle theft are also down over the last five to ten years.
One conclusion: the propagated fear of a widespread crime wave due to bail and other reforms doesn’t match the reality we face.
What has notably increased in the last year is the incidence of gun violence. This reverses recent downward trends: state data for the City of Binghamton show that the number of persons injured or killed by gun violence fell from 7 to 4 over 2017 to 2020, but rose to 11 and 14 respectively in 2021.
Broome County is not exceptional here: similar increases have been reported from around the country.
Here we have problem.
Why? Guns, Poverty, Policy
Why is gun violence up? And what might be done about it?
There is little if any evidence that reforms have systematically produced more violent crime. Increases in gun violence have occurred equally in city and states that have and have not adopted bail and related reforms. Data analysis from the Brennan Center concludes simply that “there is no clear connection between recent crime increases and the bail reform law enacted in 2019, and the data does not currently support further revisions to the legislation.” Revised state data are more explicit, confirming that less than 2% of nearly 100,000 released related to the state’s changed bail laws resulted in a rearrest on a violent felony charge while another case was pending. And that’s down from nearly 4 percent from the prior data set.
Would locking up more persons help, as the blustery rhetoric of politicians insists? The clear answer is no. Indeed a good case can be made that jail time increases crime and violence. When people get sent to jail to await trial, overwhelmingly for misdemeanor charges, they most often lose their jobs, apartments and belongings, and become unable to support themselves or their family. Jailing the poor generates poverty, homelessness, and social instability–while the powerful and wealthy post bail and go home from court to their families.
There are many local examples, although few make it in to press. Charged with 87 accounts of bank fraud for kiting 3,600 checks, local billionaire Adam Weitsman awaited trial at home (and was able to afford to settle with a $1 million federal fine and 8 months in prison out of a possible 30 year sentence). As the local Press and Sun-Bulletin editorialized on the case, “the US justice system has long been more lenient with ‘clever businessmen’ than street criminals” (January 16, 2004, p.10) Senator Thomas Libous, charged with a felony account of lying to the FBI, and his son Mathew charged with federal tax fraud, awaited trial at home as well by each paying $50,000 bail. Absent reform, this is how the system works: the poor go to jail and the rich go home. We see these disparities every day in local courts. Bail reform for misdemeanors and non-violent felonies has begun to correct these inequities.
Has “defunding the police,” that vilified phrase, led to a permissive crime spree? Despite all the fearful talk by politicians and law enforcement officials, funding for the police, prosecutors, and the courts has increased everywhere. Defunding certainly hasn’t happened in Broome County where the number of deputies and district attorneys and funding for them has steadily increased under both Republican and Democratic County Executives—despite falling crime and a drop in the daily jail count from over 500 local persons to below 300 recently. The use of force by police has hardly been hamstrung despite the wave of protests before, during and after Black Lives Matter. Far from it: the number of persons killed by police has steadily risen across the county and set a record number in 2021.
Common sense and work by justice studies scholars point to more plausible forces behind increasing violence and particularly gun violence. In all these areas we need more hard-headed research.
Weapons matter as scholars, police and their critics all agree. A recent profusion of guns into our streets and cities has been noted by many. That’s certainly true locally. Almost ten years ago the County Sheriff reported 23,000 pistol permits alone, and the number has been rising significantly recently. Neither local nor state authorities release data on guns, so the trend is hard to analyze. What we do know is that rising gun purchases nationwide during the covid outbreak have been directly associated with rising violence.
Rising unemployment and poverty, sub-standard wages, and a lack of housing and basic services have long been recognized as correlates of increased insecurity and violence. Broome County is especially susceptible along these dimensions: our poverty rate is the second highest of the state’s 62 counties. Affordable housing is in very short supply as regularly reported by the press and local activists. Homelessness has reportedly increased over 200% in the last decade. And as with incarceration, these factors are directly correlated with not just poverty but race.
And almost all analysts point to the as yet uncertain impact of COVID, which considerably exacerbated the sources and likelihood of conflict. It should not surprise us that even road rage shootings are double what they were prior to the pandemic. As we all know personally, social isolation and the ever-present threat of serious illness and death have heightened the levels of anxiety, anger, and conflict that exacerbate violence. These factors overlap with poverty, coalescing as in the past in poor neighborhoods, where rising levels of violence have often been concentrated.
What is to be done?
What has worked? There is almost no evidence that more policing, already at historically high levels, offers relief. Police invariably enter after shootings and violence, and lack the ability and resources to treat persons in mental or substance use distress. Introducing armed and uniformed persons to confront unarmed persons undergoing a psychotic crisis all too often results in more violence and even death—as occurred in the only incident resulting in the death of a county or municipal officer in near twenty years.[i]
What might alleviate social causes of violence has been an increasing concern nationwide. In both large and small cities innovative projects exist, often with proven track records. Two examples demonstrate the work being done.
Most common and effective have been community-based violence interrupter programs that have spread across the country with documented success. Composed of trusted survivors of youth and gun violence, interrupters unlike police are skilled and trained community members who intervene and reach out to those at the center of gun violence. Interrupters work to address incipient conflicts in their neighborhoods through non-violent means—and provide links to supportive services for housing, education, and employment.
Locality, trust, and respect matter here. Interrupters come from and live in their disadvantaged neighborhoods. This is in stark contrast to local police departments and the county sheriff, who have few members from or live in Black, Latinx, or disadvantaged communities (Broome County has even removed the requirement that county employees including officers live in the county).
A second group of new programs tackle how to work with persons in mental health and substance use distress. Currently police are the first responders, and the local jail has become the de facto mental health and substance use treatment center—a process that cannot but fail to address root causes as indicated by ever-rising substance use and deaths in and outside the jail. Cities across the state and county are increasingly relying trained mental health and substance use response teams which call upon police only in the infrequent cases involving weapons. These project take different forms, from independent and community-based stabilization centers for those in distress, to teams of street-level mental health and substance use social workers on call and dispatched by 911 and other agencies.
Providing alternatives to law enforcement are critical for persons in distress and conflict—including both victims and survivors. Many in our poorer and most marginalized communities are unwilling to access services directed by or tied to the police—as is current the case in Broome County where current and former police direct mental health outreach services. This reluctance is particularly the case among Black, Latinx, LGBTQ, immigrant and domestic violence survivors.
Moving Forward
In recent weeks, social workers and community activists have pressed the Governor and elected officials to abandon the failed policing and incarceration projects of the past, and turn to long-term, community-centered responses to harm and violence. The recent call from over 100 organizations across the state laid this out clearly: invest $1 billion in community-led gun violence programs and other victim and survivor services. This past month Black-led marchers against gun violence in Harlem demanded the same. We need to abandon the incarceration policies that have failed us in the past and pursue more productive and just policies in the coming years. Wise policymakers and representatives realize we can’t afford to do otherwise.
Harlem March vs. Gun Violence Feb 3 2022
Notes
[i] The reference here is to the tragic case of Johnson City Officer David Smith confronting James Clark, an unarmed medical technician undergoing a psychotic break outside Wilson Hospital in Johnson City in 2014. Clark was able to seize Officer Smith’s gun and kill Smith; Clark was then shot and killed by Officer Louis Cioci. A 204 page investigation by the police force itself produced no explanation; the family of Clark sued Binghamton and Johnson City for failing to follow protocols and training on how to handle persons in mental distress. Smith was the last local county or municipal police officer to be killed while on duty since 2002 (Binghamton, Johnson City, Endicott, Vestal, Whitney Point, Broome County Sheriff).
A related op-ed was published in the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, April 10, 2022
Its a miracle budget for Broome County. Following a hiring freeze and furloughs earlier in the summer due to COVID-19, the County Executive Jason Garnar has just announced only minor budget adjustments for the coming year.[i] How has the county offset plummeting revenues from falling sales taxes, closed casinos and restaurants, and empty hotels? Garnar says he will tap the reserve fund he has built up and take on short-term debt. Surprisingly, there was even good news: a cut in property taxes for the third straight year. And hope remains for federal aid. By all official accounts there are no serious cuts in county services.
Garnar’s announcement, however, is deceptive and far too reassuring. Dig a little beneath the surface and you find a savage budget that deepens long-term cuts to public health services and funds more incarceration and policing. It threatens to push many county residents into further debt, destitution, homelessness, and medical crises. The budget certainly does not provide the resources we need to fight COVID-19.
Defunding Public Health
Hiring freezes and furloughs sound reasonable when facing the loss of $ millions in county revenues. But who was furloughed? We weren’t told. What positions aren’t being filled? We weren’t told. What are the county’s priorities under COVID? We don’t know.
It took a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the county personnel department to find out.[i] County employees working in public health and social services were the clear targets. Of the 57 positions the County Executive furloughed:
26 were in the health and social services departments (e.g. Medicaid and food stamp (SNAP) support)
14 were in the departments of public works and public transit
2 were in the already thinly staffed county library
Not a single person was listed among the hundreds employed by the Sheriff (with a half empty jail?) or the recently expanded District Attorney’s office (with falling crime and closed courts?). No one with administrative or legislative duties was listed.
A quick skim of the proposed 2021 budget reveals the advancement of these priority choices:
public health sees 8 positions abolished this year in the Clinic and Disease Division — i.e., those assigned to monitor and address infectious diseases (during COVID times?)
3 public nurses are eliminated in Maternal and Child health
all the Directors of the STD/HIV, TB, and Maternal Child Health have been swept away.
This continues long term trends in cutting health services, year after year.[iii] Mental health has been particularly hard hit.
Funding Policing and Incarceration
What new positions are being funded? More employees for the Sheriff. In the last 5 years the county has added 25 new correctional officers (194 total staff). It costs $80,000+ on average for jail staff, with some COs earning $110,000+. And with only 300 local residents regularly in the jail (and only 35 convicted persons in total), the Sheriff has been spending $2 million or more a year on overtime. It’s a puzzle. In just five years the County has added $7 million to the jail budget alone, continuing a long trend.
The same pattern holds for the Sheriff’s law enforcement department, which supplements our already large city, university, and state police forces. In the last five years the county has added 6 new officers to reach a total force of 71 before this year’s new additions. This isn’t cheap: each new officer costs $114,000 or more per year. Meanwhile the county has been adding $200,000+ each year for new vehicles, $300,000 for overtime, $700,000 for a new garage, and many hidden items from $25-40,000 for dry cleaning wash-n-wear uniforms to the costs of stocking up and maintaining old and unused US military vehicles.
COVID-19 failures
These defunding and funding patterns endanger us. They certainly left the county woefully unprepared for COVID-19. We continue to spend tens of millions of dollars on arresting, prosecuting, and jailing thousands of persons for non-violent misdemeanors, particularly Black and Latinx residents.[iv] Headed into the ninth month of the epidemic we still find ourselves unable to provide PPE and tests for use in our clinics, hospitals, nursing homes, and the county’s big jail. The result has been repetitive “hotspots”[v] and now a yellow-zone alert and a looming shutdown.
October 6th: Governor Cuomo’s Yellow Hot Zone
This is particularly the case for the jail, where we were told on May 4th that there were no more cases,[vi] yet a later FOIA request and reports from inside reveal continuing positive tests among staff and inmates.[vii]
Meanwhile the City of Binghamton has finally introduced a testing site, but it uses rapid antigen tests that generate many false positives.[viii] SUNY-Binghamton students and staff, returning in the tens of thousands, are little better served. In contrast to Cornell and other universities where testing of students is frequent, available to all, and often mandatory, testing at SUNY-Binghamton is only allowed for a small fraction of the student body. Have you been exposed to a fellow student with COVID in an in-person classroom? You cannot make an appointment for a test, and the teachers and students in the class are not told of their exposure—contrary to what is done at even nearby SUNY colleges. The fear in student voices is palpable and justified.
Preparing for COVID-20
June 7, 2020 Community Rally for Budget Reform
The fears and dilemmas we face reflect past county decisions. Federal, state, and county authorities have all confronted viral epidemics for decades, most recently the 2002 SARS and 2009 H1N1 epidemics. In their wake public health authorities began to plan on how to handle new outbreaks, especially in crowded nursing homes, colleges, and prisons. And laws were passed requiring this: every year, every county in the state has to provide the governor with an emergency services plan that includes planning for viral pandemics. Many counties have been posting theirs on their county websites.[ix] Broome County, however, has only a two-page flyer last updated in 2008.[x] Meanwhile the county has been cutting public health positions to ensure the lack of preparedness. What will happen with the next wave of COVID 19, or some years down the road when the next epidemic predictably appears?
This year’s county budget is the result of years of defunding public health and social services and funding mass incarceration and policing. Public protests across the county have marshaled hundreds and thousands calling for a rethink of what constitutes public safety, of what meets community needs. It’s time for legislators to listen to the hard facts and the voices of the public.
Notes
[i] Ashley Biviano, “Garnar Delivers $402M Broome Budget Plan. Here’s What You Need to Know.,” Press & Sun-Bulletin, accessed October 11, 2020, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/2020/09/10/what-you-should-know-broome-county-budget-covid-19-pandemic-economy/5743466002/. The full budget is here.
[iii] Data from “Budgets | Broome County,” accessed July 24, 2020, http://www.gobroomecounty.com/countyexec/budgets.
[iv] Data from New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, Statistics, accessed October 11, 2020.
[v] As reported by the press: Bob Joseph, “Binghamton Nursing Home Identified as COVID-19 Hotspot,” WNBF News Radio 1290, accessed October 11, 2020, https://wnbf.com/binghamton-nursing-home-identified-as-covid-19-hotspot/; Amy Hogan, “Willow Point Nursing Home Details Battle Against COVID-19,” accessed October 11, 2020, http://www.wicz.com/story/42409543/willow-point-nursing-home-details-battle-against-covid19; WBNG, “Vestal Park Rehabilitation and Nursing Center Identified as Coronavirus Hotspot, Other Broome County Updates,” WBNG (blog), April 20, 2020, https://wbng.com/2020/04/20/vestal-park-rehabilitation-and-nursing-center-identified-as-coronavirus-hotspot-other-broome-county-updates/; Anthony Borrelli, “Broome County Jail Is a ‘hot Spot’ for Coronavirus. How Is the Facility Limiting the Outbreak?,” Pressconnects, accessed April 21, 2020, https://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/public-safety/2020/04/20/coronavirus-broome-county-jail-inmates-quarantine/5158860002/.
[vi] WBNG, “Garnar: Broome County Correctional Facility No Longer COVID-19 Hotspot, Other Updates,” WBNG (blog), May 4, 2020, https://wbng.com/2020/05/04/garnar-broome-county-correctional-facility-no-longer-covid-19-hotspot-other-updates/.
[vii] The report may be accessed here. The county could not (would not?) provide any information on the total number of tests given in the jail.
[viii] Alexis C. Madrigal Meyer Robinson, “Why Trump’s Rapid-Testing Plan Worries Scientists,” The Atlantic, October 9, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/10/do-rapid-antigen-tests-have-accuracy-problem/616681/; Ken Belson and Ben Shpigel, “Nursing Homes in Nevada Told to Stop Using Rapid Coronavirus Tests,” The New York Times, October 8, 2020, sec. World, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/10/07/world/covid-coronavirus.
[ix] For example, Monroe county’s pandemic plan is here, Warren County’s plan is here.
Mayor Richard David, State Senator Frederick Akshar and the BPD Swat team with their new “Bearcat”
As continuous rallies show, Broome County residents have joined the national movement to defund bloated police and incarceration budgets. Local commercial media are now rushing to respond, broadcasting on how impossible it is to lower police funding. This morning WBNG reports that while police budgets are a significant share of local municipality budgets, little change can be expected. Why? “None of the municipal leaders interviewed for this story outright supported the idea.”
Johnson City’s Mayor said his police department is already frugal, while Binghamton’s Mayor Richard David declaimed that no changes in the budget could be made. Broome County Executive Jason Garner told WBNG that “the county sheriff’s office’s budget has remained stable over the past few years and accounts for a low percentage of the overall budget.” Endicott Mayor Jackson was blunter: “They’re taking away our guns, and now they’re taking away our police”!
City and county budgets can be confusing. Yet a little investigation would help here. Funding under Mayor David for the largest police force, the Binghamton Police Department (BPD), has been increasing year after year despite falling crime rates.
Take the largest budget: the Sheriff’s budget of $40 million. Can any of that be cut? Is it all necessary? The largest proportion is for the jail, which was expanded in 2015, despite community protests, at a cost of $7 million. It is designed and staffed to incarcerate 600 persons. Last month it held 277 persons. Expenses are out of control: $30 million annually for a jail at half capacity, housing only 27 convicted persons, and still budgeted for $2.5 million of overtime pay?
And contrary to County Executive Garnar’s claims, funding has not been “stable.” Far from it. Every year Garnar has added new officers, highlighting five new officers in his 2020 budget announcement alone. As detailed here earlier, the jail budget has rapidly increased in every budget Garnar has proposed and the legislature has approved. It’s a longstanding trend under both Democratic and Republican County Executives in the mass incarceration era.
Dig a little deeper into distant capital and other budget lines and you find more suspect $ millions. Does the Sheriff really need $250,000 this year, almost every year, for new vehicles? Do the City of Binghamton and the Sheriff really need multiple armored personnel carriers? To do what? These are weapons of war. Has anyone counted the pension costs for hundreds of surplus jail officers? Should we continue to spend well over $1 million a year on cops in schools across the county, rather than on teachers and counselors?
In sum, the claims of our elected officials don’t hold up. We have bloated incarceration and policing budgets. Its time for a change.
Can we scrap it? Used to patrol South African townships during Apartheid. Now patrolling Broome County.
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.
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.
Go to visit someone in the Broome County jail and you confront a large sanitizing station right before you enter the metal detector. It makes sense: trying to control the flow of illnesses into and out of crowded public institutions is basic preventative medicine. The only problem? Watch: persons headed inside place their hands under a spout–and nothing happens. They shake the spout and it rocks loosely. The sanitizer has been dry, unplugged, and empty for as long any visitors can remember. It’s the state of care and preparation for a flu pandemic in the Broome County jail, as in many upstate areas. Even the most basic healthy practices are impossible in the jail.
Start with sanitizer inside: guards and the incarcerated have no access to any in the pods where up to 60 persons are housed together. The guard sits at a station without sanitizer. Guards do have it in their separate bathrooms and in the visiting room, and it exists in the medical pod for staff use. Everywhere else, everyone remains unprotected. Persons incarcerated ten years ago recall that sanitizer was then widely available. Where did it go, and why?
[Update: the day after this post was published online, sanitizer appeared in the visitors’ waiting room. There is still none in the pods where people live and work.]
And soap to wash your hands? Incarcerated persons are given
one “indigent hygiene pack” that supplies one 4 oz bottle of liquid soap a
week—imagine trying to shower, wash your face, and have any left over for daily
hand washings? Impossible. And social
distancing? Well, try to avoid other persons when you are in a double occupancy
cell (even as there are empty pods and cells). Cover your mouth when you sneeze
with a tissue—when there are no tissues to be had? What do you do if you are
shackled or handcuffed?
And food and nutrition? Coerced and incarcerated kitchen workers report that for years food has been prepared for both the incarcerated and guards without the private food contractor enforcing basic sanitary regulations. Little hand washing is said to ever take place in the kitchen, shared dishes and utensils are not sanitized properly in dishwashers, food trays are moldy, meals are served with live insects, and food, staff, and the incarcerated travel everywhere. This not news: the current private food provider has a terrible record as community organizations long ago told the County Executive and legislature. Persons boarded in from surrounding counties are shocked at the quantity and quality of the food. Sick and healthy persons mingle constantly, without care or concern.
The arrival of the coronavirus in our jail threatens not only those in the jail but those in the surrounding community, as we know all too well from brutal and diffusing infection rates China’s prisons, the release of prisoners in Iran to avoid further infections, and ongoing prison revolts and family protests in Italy due to overcrowded conditions and the termination of visiting rights.
What should we do? We can
Improve medical and health care inside immediately
Reduce the numbers in the jail substantially
Fire jail administrators and begin a transition to end the mass incarceration system in the county
1. Improve conditions immediately: for those inside, providing sanitizer, soap and better food (and finally some fruit, any fruit) will help. So too would opening access to worried family and friends, many of whom cannot visit due to work or distance from Binghamton. The county might finally consider having weekend visiting hours. It might open up use of unused, non-contact visiting rooms that allow separation between people. The county should also stop making gross profits from phone calls, and immediately lower prices and allow free calls for indigent persons in need.
2. Reduce the number at risk: short-term measures will not prevent the pandemic from sweeping through the jail and into the community. This calls for more direct action. County jails like Broome’s have tens of thousands of persons who cycle in and out, on short stays, over the course of year.
Locking the jail down is no
solution. Family visitors will rightly panic over the fate of loved ones. And
that will not stop movement into and out of the community: hundreds of lawyers,
service workers, guards and even judges move in and out every day, not to
mention persons going back and forth to court every day. And those released are
coming home every day.
The most critical action is to reduce
the number vulnerable to the virus in the jail and thus reduce the coming
demand for complex medical care in the jail and in the community.
How? We should dramatically reduce the number of persons by these actions:
Release
all persons with low-level offenses by following the new bail law,
reclassifying misdemeanor offences into non-jailable offenses, and using
citations for low-level crimes. Can we not accelerate these measures, as has
begun with the new bail law, whose implementation matches falling crime rates?
Release
all pregnant women to community care, particularly those with disabilities and
substance use disorders. Do we really think incarcerating pregnant women for
minor offenses is in the service of public safety?
Release
as many as possible elderly, disabled, and medically fragile persons. Given data on death rates by age and health
condition, should elderly and ill persons be left so vulnerable in closed
institutions?
Release
persons with substance use disorders into community-based care. Is the jail
really a medical center for treating diseases?
Release
those committed to jail for technical parole and probation violations. Does it
really make sense to send my neighbor’s kid to a long-term stay in the jail for
smoking weed?
Reduce
unnecessary parole and probation hearings. Do we really want many of our
poorest and often sick residents travelling by hours on public transport,
congregating in large waiting rooms, and talking to officers—all for brief
meetings?
Stop
the jail from being a dumping ground for persons sent from all over the region
on behalf of homeland security, ICE, and federal agencies. Does the county
really need the profits from boarding in persons for federal agencies?
There is a cost
with these measures: letting persons come home and isolate outside the jail
would surely require expanded reentry help, most immediately housing and
medical care. Community-based agencies to handle medical care and reentry
services, if funded, exist. Housing presents a real challenge, requiring state and county funds to
repurpose empty hotels, dorms, and apartment buildings. Whatever the costs of a
long-term transition to community treatment and assistance, they would surely
be less than forcibly isolating ill persons in group settings and denying them
basic medical care.
3. Any long-term, substantive improvement in medical care would begin with the termination and replacement of the private, out-of-state contractor with a new public health and food service. And no change will occur unless Sheriff Harder, who has constructed and run the jail for over 20 years, and in a recent court ruling was deemed directly and personally responsible for an inmate’s unnecessary death, is replaced.
****************
What we need: oversight and an end to the jail as we know
it
The dilemmas we face are not by chance: Broome County, like upstate
counties, is ill-prepared by design. Previous pandemics in jails and prisons
have been studied, and national plans to address them have been developed by
the CDC
and researchers at the Bureau of Justice
among others.
You will not however readily find any consideration of these
in county emergency operations plans which by law are forwarded every year to
the Governor. Unlike other counties, Broome does not even have plans on its website. Where such plans exist, as on Monroe or Sullivan
county websites, they are not reassuring: the separate sections dealing with
pandemics rarely if ever consider the needs of institutionalized populations. There
is little mention of nursing homes and none regarding jails. Worse, the Broome County
Health division tasked with the surveillance and prevention of communicable
diseases has seen its staff cut by 20% and its funding by nearly 30% in the
last 10 years.
There is an elemental truth here: our large jail system was
built without any link to public health services, and lacks basic
evidence-based health care and any effective oversight. For those incarcerated,
their families and staff, managing COVID-19 under these conditions will be impossible.
Now, not in some distant future, is the time to radically reduce the jail
population, investigate current failures and abuses, and restructure the
facility. The Governor and state legislators could begin this process by
opening up an investigation of upstate jails as proposed in Assembly
Bill 4373.
These times will test us: do we retreat into self-isolation
and fear, or do we maintain a common humanity with those among us, especially with
the poorest, the oldest, the ill?
Recent Comments