JUST Talk

Commentaries on Local Justice by Bill Martin

Tag: covid broome county

How to Spread COVID-19 in Broome County

May 4, 2020 / / 1 Comment

If you had to design a system to spread COVID-19 in Broome County, how would you do it?  Follow the sheriff and county officials in three, easy steps.

Step One: Local officials have sought to isolate the county, terminating all bus service into and out of Binghamton, closing hotels to visitors, and demanding that any newcomers quarantine for fourteen days.  This is all reversed when it comes to Sheriff Harder making $ millions for the county by bringing in persons from distant areas and renting out cells at $85 to $250/day.  Over the last year over 50 cells on average were rented to federal and state agencies:

Step Two: You mix this influx with COVID-19 in the jail, as inmates move between pods and everyone shares tight quarters for eating and living.  There is no possibility of the county’s mandatory social distancing being applied in the jail. There is no ready provision of sanitizer to inmates, and the recently-supplied masks are handed out so infrequently as to be useless according to CDC regulations. Symptomatic persons quarantined in isolated medical cells are moved out and mixed with newcomers with unknown COVID-19 status. Persons working in the kitchen and laundry are reportedly moving across the jail, with some having been transferred into medical isolation. 

Inmate:  Social distancing? The bunk beds are 18” apart!

Step Three:  Having created the jail as the “hotspot” with the highest rate of infection in the county, you then spread this into the community with no constraint or followup.  Over 150 correctional officers work at the jail, daily moving in and out and going home to their families.  Well over another hundred persons work in the Sheriff’s complex doing the same (which is likely the reason the County Executive Jason Garnar moved his daily press briefings out of the complex after testing revealed the high rates inside).  Since jails hold persons on short sentences, persons are released regularly, with few if any reentry services provided by the county and no provisions for self-isolation.  As far as can be determined there is absolutely no tracing at all and no testing after people leave the jail.

A screenshot of a cell phone Description automatically generated

Is it any wonder that the county never reports on the number being tracked or quarantined after being infected with COVID-19 at the jail, including correctional officers, civilian staff, medical workers, food contractors, and transferred or released persons?

There is a reason other sheriffs, district attorneys, and judges, and even Trump’s attorney general, have released short-term, medically compromised, non-violent and other offenders:  jails and prisons are petri dishes for COVID-19, incubating and then inexorably spreading the virus into surrounding and distant communities.  Broome officials have however other designs, for which we are all paying dearly.

Who’s Exempt from Social Distancing?

April 13, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Social Distancing?

They do it at the Pentagon

Social distancing 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?

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