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Commentaries on Local Justice by Bill Martin

Tag: jason garnar

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.

Jail Protest Explodes, County Officials Dither and Deny

April 15, 2020 / / 0 Comments

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:

  • Provide daily counts of tests, positives, quarantine and deaths in the jail
  • Immediately release anyone at high risk for infection
  • Release anyone held on non-violent charges
  • Provide testing, sanitation supplies, medical treatment, and adequate nutrition
  • Make phone/video calls free and end predatory commissary pricing
  • Ensure those coming home have a discharge and treatment plan, including medical and housing resources that enable self-isolation

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.

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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