JUST Talk

Commentaries on Local Justice by Bill Martin

Tag: Sheriff Akshar

2027 Broome Justice Budget?

September 29, 2026 / / 0 Comments

The Sheriff is in the news again, this time the national news.  On September 15, 2026 he led a delegation of Sheriffs to testify in Congress, denouncing New York State’s new law that prohibits formal agreements with ICE. This endangers, he tells everyone, the county, the state and the nation. Along with other New York Sheriffs he demands full power to cooperate with ICE and Federal authorities as he sees fit.  It was compelling political theater in support of Trump’s war against migrant workers.

What captured much of the media however was a forceful exchange over a women’s charges of an exploitative relationship following Akshar’s investigation of the homicide of her son. Akshar called the woman’s allegations “fictitious and slanderous.” When U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman challenged Akshar’s credibility to represent law enforcement, Akshar was enraged: “Only a degenerate politician like you would bring this up at a hearing like this!” Closer to home Akshar’s work with ICE has caused him much trouble, ranging from disrupted town halls through protests at the jail to continually contested county legislative meetings.


Legislative Meeting Sept 19, 2025

Give credit where it is due: his support for mass policing, incarceration, deportation and the President are consistent and longstanding, appearing at Trump rallies many years ago.

And with his own spin doctor-the first appointment he made when elected Sheriff-we can expect to see more aggressive and continuous appearances by Akshar. But will Broome County buy it? Will legislators continue to support the Sheriff and these policies in the face of public revulsion with ICE? A test is soon coming: the 2027 county budget.

Here Comes the Budget, Again

The County Executive had little to say in his presentation on the proposed 2027 Broome County budget about county policing and incarcerating residents. Other than praising the Sheriff and his good works, Jason Garner was quiet on the Sheriff’s budget, speaking only about a little more money for bullet-proof vests for law enforcement officers. And who could be against that?

But take a closer look: it’s a bit duplicitous. The Sheriff’s budget surpasses $60 million for the first time. The jail budget increases by over 10% to at least $42 million.  As in past years there is more money for jail salaries and benefits ($31 million) including $4.9 million for overtime.

More Bearcats!

Dig deeper and there are further surprises: Broome County gets a new Bearcat! No, not a star recruit for the local State University of New York’s Bearcat athletic teams, but $360,000 for another armored personnel carrier (Capital Budget, p.13). Yes, it’s another one: this is the third one the Sheriff’s office has added to his fleet, following the 2019 Casspir (formerly used to wage war against Black South Africans), a 2020 Bearcat (purchased with commissary profits legally required to be spent on the rehabilitation of incarcerated residents no less)—and there is at least one more in the county, the Binghamton Police Department’s Bearcat, purchased in 2019 with then State Senator Akshar’s assistance.

The Bearcat joins an impressive stream of war-fighting equipment: military-grade transport trucks, enhanced Humvees, sound cannons, multiple surveillance drones and so on. What have multiple armored vehicles been used for other than policing protests, poking holes in windows of parolee’s homes, and entertaining children at county show-n-tells? We don’t know. Are fevered heads envisioning fighting an invasion from Canada across Lake America?

AI generated

Build it and they will come?

Looking forward the county budget tells us to envision higher jail costs, more costly incarceration of Federal and ICE prisoners, and jail expansion. In his budget proposal the Sheriff estimates an increase in the jail population from 340 in 2025 to 410 in 2026, and on to 460 in 2027 (County Recommended Budget p.460). Costs rise for related food, medical treatment, hospitalization, transportation, and other needs of poor residents.

This is an old story, familiar to students of mass incarceration: build it and they will fill it. Data-driven studies show that construction of prisons propelled mass incarceration through the 1980s and 1990s, especially in impoverished rural communities (and especially Black communities).[1] Largely ignored was the boom to build jails exemplified by Broome County, fed in part by the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, sponsored by Senator Strom Thurmond and championed by Senator Joe Biden, which led to local county jails becoming depositories for federal prisoners including ICE detainees.[2]

Broome followed these trends: when IBM fled the area 18,000 jobs evaporated, poverty increased, the local population declined, and incarceration accelerated. In the late 1970s the Broome jail housed fewer than 50 persons, tripling to 150 in the late 1980s. A brand new jail was then funded, located on land outside the city donated by the State University of New York.

It opened in 1996 to hold 536 persons.  Jail numbers rose to 500.  In 2014 a study by a jail architect firm was commissioned by the county and projected the need for a 710-bed jail. In 2016 Democrat and Republican legislators joined forces to vote $6.8 million, over a protest in county chambers, to expand the jail to a capacity of 600.

But then numbers fell. Ten years of community and statewide protest produced criminal justice reforms that reversed the drumbeat for mass incarceration.  While local politicians, billionaires, and correctional officers facing felonies had long easily gotten bail and avoided the jail, other local, poorer residents now could as well.  Jail numbers, excluding Federal detainees, fell to barely 300 persons, paralleling even longer and steadier falls in crime rates.

Then came the local blowback. In 2023 a new Sheriff and District Attorney arrived in town, and two years later, came a new President. Drug wars, crime panics, a mania over migrants, and funding flowed again.  Jail numbers have been steadily increasing, reinforcing Broome County’s claim to having the highest incarceration rate of all 62 New York counties.

And then came ICE

Trump’s war against migrant workers was expected to help keep the jail full.  Not because of the Sheriff personally signing a 287g agreement with ICE to serve detainee warrants, but by simply continuing a 2002 agreement to house Federal prisoners which had long been used to sustain county cooperation with ICE and house ICE detainees. It is this agreement with the U.S. Marshalls Service that conservative New York State Sheriffs and Akshar defend. New York State’s new law against cooperation with ICE may lead to the termination of housing all federal prisoners, like the local dairy worker held at county expense for six months in the Broome County Jail on solely immigration charges.  And lots of Federal funding is at risk for Sheriffs. Indeed Sheriffs report they make money from the Federal reimbursement of $110/day per person.  Among the Sheriff’s 2027 Objectives in his budget statement:  “Maximize available housing capacity to generate revenue through agreements with the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and other New York State counties” (p.236). By Sheriff Akshar’s own formula, however, the cost of boarding in a person is $274/day, meaning the county loses $164 for every Federal detainee every day. For 2025 this totaled $2,860,000.

Who Profits?

Where the Sheriff does turn a profit is on charges for phone calls, tablets, and commissary sales. At the June 18, 2026 meeting of the county legislature community activists and families of the incarcerated rallied against the proposal to renew the Sheriff’s monopoly agreement with the out of state GTL corporation; up for a vote was a contract that would dramatically increase the prices on phone, video, text and tablet use. When questioned by puzzled legislators, the Sheriff simply said Federal law dictated it and he needed to make more money. Fake news, said Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier in its press release. Why are calls to stay in contact with family free in state prisons and other New York State jails, but cost 12 cents per minute in Broome County? Infrastructure and running costs run around 1.5 cents at best. Why does the Sheriff charge a 60% profit on every call? For the first time five legislators voted against a budget item for the Sheriff.

One might ask the same of other jail contracts.

Where do the 44% profits from commissary profits go? Why was the medical provider overpaid by at least $600,000? What will be the cost of two looming class action lawsuits over salmonella poisoning of 320 persons, with 12 sent to the local hospital, by the jail’s out of state private food contractor?  Successive county audits in 2024 and 2025 continue to report the lack of legally registered contracts and the inability to trace prices, sales, expenditures and revenues. No member of the public could pose these questions to legislators much the sheriff at recent county meetings.

There is only one scheduled chance a year for persons to speak while the legislators listen (but don’t respond) Thursday, October 22nd at 5:00 p.m. 6th Floor, County Office Building, 60 Hawley Street,

Given recent protests by the audience this past year over justice, housing, and health expenditures, expect a long meeting.  The public has much to say.

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[1] John Eason, Big House on the Prairie:  Rise of the Rural Ghetto & Prison Proliferation (University of Chicago Press, 2017).

[2] “If You Build It,” Vera Institute of Justice, accessed September 26, 2026, https://www.vera.org/in-our-backyards-stories/if-you-build-it.

Medical, Food Horrors Update

June 9, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Media reports and press releases from both the Broome County Sheriff and Broome County Health Department reassure us they have gotten to the cause of the poisoning of over 300 persons in the jail and remedies are forthcoming.

If only it were so. Perhaps persons should look a closer look at the record. Of the 24 inspections since 2017, only 4 had critical violations reported. The two just before the poisoning reported zero critical violations.  State law requires inspections of health conditions in the jail, and apparently only the kitchen is ever inspected and that barely.

Justice and Unity for Southern Tier, this blog, and incarcerated persons and their families and friends have long reported serious, life-threatening health and food hazards.  In 2018 Sue Ruff, Rozann Greco, and I wrote an op-ed against the contract with Trinity, reporting on problems so severe that contracts elsewhere were cancelled.

JUST wrote a letter to the Broome County Legislature asking our local representatives to keep local food workers and reject outsourcing food to Trinity corporation.

In following years persons inside reported continuous, serious violations of food preparation and quality–which we posted widely on social media and the JUST website:

This blog has also steadily reported on food problems and illnesses.

But we are today told there is no one to blame. There is no sign of any comprehensive  investigation. There is no discussion of the dire costs to persons in the jail, and no revelations on the financial and legal mess for the county. We are reassured solutions are in hand, perhaps another cost-saving, death-defying, for profit, out-sourced from the county, food service contact.

We hope for better, but we do live in Orwellian times.

 

 

 

Medical Horrors in the Broome County Jail

May 29, 2026 / / 0 Comments

What is happening? What is to be done?

The ongoing medical disaster in the Broome County Jail should surprise no one.  Family and friends of the incarcerated tell us of plaintive cries for help, of hundreds being locked into cells with diarrhea and vomiting, without showers, and with intensely painful bone and body pains–and being offered small cups of Gatorade and small doses of Pepto-Bismol as treatment. It’s a horror story accompanied by all the signs of a coverup.

At first people on the outside were told by the press releases of the Sheriff and Health Department this was due to a norovirus.  Then it was food poisoning, salmonella.  Or was it poison, as flyers posted in jail pods we are told suggested? Or was it due to meat accidentally sprayed with insecticide and still used as some tell us—without staff becoming ill since their daily food is provided separately even if charged to the food costs of the incarcerated?

Left in the hand of those responsible we may never know, we may never be able to separate fact from rumors that circulate behind a wall of official secrecy. As reported at length in this blog, e.g. here,  the local Health Department for years has not conducted legally required inspections of the health operations of the facility.  The official oversight body, the State Commission of Correction–which currently cannot even meet due to a lack of a quorum of commissioners–has failed to investigate continuous and literally deadly conditions in the Jail.  Broome County provides no oversight and refuses to reveal the costs of lost wrongful abuse and death lawsuits settled out of court.  Grievances and allegations over medical abuse, persons admitted to the jail without medical clearances, and rape go unacknowledged, unaddressed, and continue to flow out to family and friends.

What is to be done?  Here are four beginning steps. You can be certain others, particularly those with medical and incarceration experience, will have other recommendations.

One, an independent commission with open public hearings should be appointed to investigate this and longstanding cases of medical malfeasance. For reasons already noted, it can’t be under the direction of those currently responsible and involved for managing the jail and health conditions there.

Two, the county needs to immediately terminate the private, out of state medical provider and contract with local medical services and physicians responsible to local authorities and oversight.

Three, food purchasing and preparation needs to be removed from an out of sight, out of state, for profit corporation, and be returned to a locally, county-run food facility employing local workers.

Four, the county needs to begin the process of separating the jail from law enforcement by placing the jail under an independent authority as is done in other counties. It is not reasonable to expect the sheriff to run a large law enforcement agency and a very large jail. The county should correspondingly move to construct and enact policies to reverse recent decisions that have made the jail into a regional health care center. Medical services from substance use treatment to the care of the disabled should be in the hands of local medical care givers and providers–and not hidden behind high and secretive walls.

July 2024 County response to Freedom of Information Law request for Health Department legally-required health condition inspections of the jail?

“I was able to connect with our Health Department regarding your below request. The only record they would maintain are kitchen inspections.”

Last Broome County Health Department inspection report on County Jail kitchen only? August 27, 2025: zero violations

 

 

 

Broome County: Fleecing Families, Feeding Sheriff

May 22, 2026 / / 1 Comment

“It just seems so heartless”

This month Broome County moved to radically raise what people pay to be incarcerated in the county jail. Families already spend mightily to help loved ones survive, paying for food, hygiene, haircuts, and irregular fees. Now they face accelerated, monopoly rates to stay in touch by phone, text, or video.

It was not supposed to happen. For over a decade friends and families of the millions incarcerated in our jails and prisons lobbied to reduce the exorbitant costs of staying in touch. Decades of research show that when families stay together, children do better, jails and prisons are safer for everyone, and fewer persons return to prison. And as internet calling replaced landlines, the cost of local and long-distance calls fell amazingly for all of us.

The result? In New York State prisons phone calls are now free, making it possible for incarcerated people to stay in contact with their children, wives, husbands, grandparents and loved ones. In New York City jails phone calls have been free since 2019. But not in Broome County, where the Sheriff just announced stunning increases in phone, video, and tablet rates. Some were increased by over 100%, all generating 34-44% kickback profits.

Why?

Sheriff Akshar had a ready explanation faithfully relayed by local media, it’s a federal regulation he says: “New rate changes for phone calls ($0.09 to $0.13) and video conferencing (0.14 to $0.17) are due to recent nationwide standards changes set by the FCC. Our tablet vendor, Viapath Technologies, made changes in their pricing in accordance with those new standards.” If only that were true. Like so much in these Orwellian days, its fake news.

No government act, law or FCC ruling required raising rates. Rates rose due to a local decision made by the Sheriff to sign a new contract with the prison phone monopoly, GTL/Viapath. And it is the families of incarcerated in the jail, many held for ICE and the Federal government, that will pay. Five years ago the Sheriff’s take was estimated to be over $500,000/year, it must surely be more now, and rising.

How did this happen? After 20 years of work by families,  in 2022 a bipartisan Congressional vote approved the Martha Wright-Reed Fair and Just Communications Act, named after a grandmother who struggled to afford phone calls to her grandson. The Act mandated significant reductions in phone call costs in prisons and jails. In 2024 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued new regulations as required by the Act to reduce rates and end kickbacks to jailers, all while funding equipment and call monitoring costs.

But private prison telephone companies, prison wardens, Republican state attorneys, and county sheriffs struck back. And with Trump came two new commissioners at the FCC who moved to defy Congress.  Last October they overturned rates caps, increasing them by as much as 83%. Sheriff Akshar cast this as a mandatory federal action. But this was fiction. The FCC only set legal maximum rates, any jail could set rates anywhere below.  And thus calls remain free from New York State prisons and New York City jails. But not in Broome County.

It gets worse given new technology. Landline phone calls have been fully replaced by the use of tablets with bounded, monitored, and recorded access for phone and video calls, music,  movies and so on—all to be purchased by per minute rates. Tablets became a massive new source of profit for prison phone companies and sheriffs.

I asked men inside what they feared most from rising prices for commissary, punishment block fees, or phone, video, or tablet use.  It wasn’t commissary where prices have just been raised, or phone calls, or video calls now at 21 cents per minute.  It was the new tablet rates which for limited materials went from 3 to 7 cents per minute and from 5 to 7 cents per minute for other uses. Limited 2000-character-only texts to persons inside also doubled in price from 25 to 50 cents. And then there are the fees on top of these rates: if you deposit $15 in your own account, to send 30 texts to a friend for example,  you will pay another $5.44 for the transaction, raising the rate to 68 cents per text:

It’s a complicated structure designed to confuse, but this much is clear: GTL/Viapath gets 60% of sales and the Sheriff’s commission is set at 44%.

The contract brokered by the Sheriff was approved unanimously by the Public Safety Committee of the Broome County Legislature on May 11, 2026, including votes by Democrat legislators Kim Myers and Susan Ryan. On May 21, 2026 the County Legislature met but held over the resolution for another meeting. No comments by the public on this and other financially contentious resolutions were allowed. One thing we know for certain: the Sheriff is already charging people the new rates, lack of county contract approval or not.

 

What will happen? As one family member reported to WBNG, “It just seems so heartless.”  She already spends $500 or more a month to stay in contact with her son and fears for his and others’ mental health if communication is cut off. People will go without food to fund phone calls, food and soap for incarcerated family. Children at home and ICE teenagers in the jail will become more anxious and depressed. The jail will become more dangerous for everyone inside. But be assured, the Sheriff’s ‘discretionary’ funds will grow.

And this is just the beginning: people in the jail report that commissary prices are going up this past month too, already a source of illegal profits. Here state law dictates profits must be reasonable, but they are not. And profits skimmed by the Sheriff are legally required to be spent on items for  the rehabilitation of incarcerated persons. Sheriff Akshar tells WBNG that’s true for phone and tablet profits too:  “as always, any revenue received from those tablet messages and internet use goes directly to improvements to programming, services and other direct benefits to the incarcerated population.”

How would we know? There are no public audits or accounting in any detail. The state oversight body, the State Commission of Correction, doesn’t provide any insight (although it does occasionally admonish the Sheriff for not following basic regulations, including hygienic ones like weekly laundry linen services–which he simply ignores for years).  By state law the county does have to audit the commissary fund (but not other jail funds). You can’t find any figures in the county audit of commissary accounts.  The latest 2024 county audit simply, and most generously, and only notes “inconsistent authorization and documentation of commissary disbursements” and the balance in the fund was over $500,000 (2025 County Audit here). The 2024 audit recorded a balance of $496,000 and “noted that the Broome County Sheriff’s Office does not have any written policies and procedures regarding the Commissary fund” and that “the contract with Trinity Services Group, Inc. to provide food, health, and personal hygiene items for sale to inmates had previously expired” so the jail was operating commissary without any legal, contractual basis to do so.

What one can find via past Freedom of Information Requests is profits being spent on basic hygiene supplies, haircuts, wheelbarrows, oil, lexis-nexus costs, TVs, wages, party favors, copier costs, newspaper subscriptions, food, lawn tractors and trailers, and an armored personnel carrier—all this for rehabilitation?

The Rehabilitation Machine: the Broome County Bearcat

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Further reading/references

 

Enforce the laws: slave labor, abuse and illegalities at the Broome County jail

April 20, 2024 / / 1 Comment

On April 18, 2024 Legal Services filed a lawsuit against Sheriff Frederick J. Akshar, Broome County Jail administrator Robert Charpinsky, Corrections Officer Philip Stephens, Broome County, and Trinity Services Group (the jail’s food subcontractor headquartered in Florida). It charges them with enslaving free persons, forced and unpaid labor, harmful and unlawful coercion, and violating state labor laws. Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier has issued a press release with more detail and a call to action. Further reading on prisons, jails and forced labor may be found here.

The Broome County Jail and its Sheriff have lost successive lawsuits over wrongful deaths (Alvin Rios, Salladin Barton, the outstanding Thomas Husar case), sexual and racial abuse (most recently the Holland case), and the beating of youth (the Vega and Legal Services youth case) as reported on this blog and elsewhere in the media. The continuing problem: there is no active oversight as this latest lawsuit shows us yet once again. The State Commission of Correction, consisting of a retired Sheriff and a former NYC Department of Corrections administrator, has proven to be more adept at forcing the building of new jails than protecting the unfortunate persons who end up in county jails. The result is that even the thin laws and regulations formally protecting those in the hidden cells and cages of county jails are widely ignored. The damage is widespread–and thanks to local activists and activists increasingly coming to light.

We need systemic solutions to a systemic problem. JUST closes it press release by (1) calling on local legislators to cosponsor and promote two bills before the State Assembly and Senate that would end slavery and provide new oversight of labor in state prisons (but not jails in the bill, yet), and (2) asking “County and State officials, including the Attorney General, Comptroller and our elected representatives, to provide independent oversight of the jail and its operations as they are empowered to do under state laws”.

Here are three areas that show the systemic problem in three critical areas covered by limited existing laws and regulations:  sexual and racial abuse, medical and health violations, and financial malfeasance imposed on those in the jail as it has become the center for displaced, discarded, ill and impoverished residents of the county.

The incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, their families, and local activists have long written state and county authorities, legislators, and the press in all these areas. The Comptroller, Attorney General, and State and County Health Departments should at the very least do their legal duty.  State law empowers all local Assembly and Senate members to make unannounced inspection visits to jails.  Some state legislators have done so in their counties. But not yet in Broome County. They need to do so.

Sexual and Racial Abuse

Public records provided by successive and successful lawsuits by families (wrongful deaths), Legal Services of Central NY (youth and Vega abuse cases), and NYCLU (Makkyla Holland case) have documented in detail rampant and continuing racial and sexual abuse in the Broome County jail. Yet the abuse continues and abusers go unpunished. Officers continue to abuse persons of color with the ready use of the n-word, while sexually abusive treatment and language are directed toward women, men, and LGBTQ persons alike.  Allegations of rape circulate. Not a single person has ever been disciplined for these behaviors. Complaints and grievances by incarcerated persons of violations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 are not allowed to be filed; grievances of any sort are regularly denied contrary to state law as documented yearly by the State Commission of Correction, including in the most recent March 2024 inspection report.

March 2024 State Commission of Correction, Minimum Standard Evaluation of Facility Operations for the Broome County Jail, “Commission staff reviewed several grievance packages and found that the grievance coordinator continues to issue determinations that grievable grievances are non-grievable.”
 
Bill Martin, Truthout, March 24, 2024, “In NY Jails, Prisoners Must Submit Their Abuse Grievances to Their Abusers,” Can openly transphobic and homophobic jailers be relied upon to enforce nondiscrimination settlements? Can disabled and injured youth, especially young Black men, depend upon legal settlements to end abuse in our jails?
Medical and Health Violations

State law now requires medically assisted treatment for persons with substance use, and the Broome County Jail handbook lays out procedures for MAT.  Yet these are not followed. JUST members and family visiting the incarcerated are regularly told of instances of persons detoxing without MAT;  attempts by persons to get on methadone are denied for weeks and months, despite appeals to UHS and OASAS offices in Broome County and regional headquarters.  Media reports, most recently in NYFocus, document the problem in detail. Unsanitary conditions and severe shortcomings in medical procedures are regularly reported, even by the State Commission on Correction’s own annual inspections with no external oversight and follow-up provided.  State law requires county health departments to inspect the jail but as the Sheriff has reported to the State Commission of Correction every year, the BC Health Department has not provided any inspection reports and apparently refuses to inspect the facility.

NYFocus, Sept 27, 2023: “‘Doom County Jail’: Dysfunction Plagues Program for Incarcerated Opioid Users. Men locked up in the Broome County jail describe an opioid treatment program so shoddy, they risk withdrawal, relapse, and overdose.

March 2022 State Commission of Correction, Minimum Standard Evaluation of Facility Operations for the  Broome County Jail, “Commission staff spoke with administration and noted that the facility is consistently requesting the health department inspection, however the Broome County Department of Health has yet to complete such inspection.”

State regulation 9 CRR-NY 7015.3  “The chief administrative officer shall request that the local health authority with jurisdiction over the facility perform annual inspections of the facility. The results of such inspection shall be recorded in writing, together with a summary of the action taken to address any deficiencies, and maintained on file at the facility.”

Financial Malfeasance

Despite a significant drop in the number of persons incarcerated, the budget for the jail has steadily grown while funding for community health and social services has steadily been cut.  There remain however no oversight of jail finances and financial irregularities that contravene state law persistently appear. The sheriff recently had to admit that the county had been billed for and paid their out-of-state medical provider $250,000 for services that were not provided.  There were no fines or investigation. In order to meet basic hygiene and food needs, the incarcerated and their families spend $ millions at the jail commissary. State regulations require the Sheriff to spend his considerable profits (up to 44%) from unconscionable costs for commissary, telephone, video and tablet use –e.g. calls to family cost 4 cents/minute from state prisons, but 25 cents per minute from the BC jail—on the rehabilitation of inmates.  Yet there is no accounting of the $ millions accumulated from these fees; past investigations reveal purchases range from lawn tractors, trailers, to retirement party costs.  State and county authorities need to investigate and conduct an audit of jail purchases and expenditures.

State regulation 9 CRR-NY 7016.1 “ (b) The prices of any items offered for sale shall be fixed by the sheriff, or official in charge, to the extent that the commissary operation will be self-supporting and will provide a modest return above costs. (c) Profits resulting from commissary sales shall be deposited in a separate bank account and shall be utilized only for purposes of prisoner welfare and rehabilitation.”

JUST May 13, 2019 letter to County Executive and SCOC (unanswered),  “an examination of the county records regarding jail commissary and related accounts suggest significant irregularities. We request that you conduct a thorough examination and audit of the accounts for at least the last three years.”

Seek Justice  

New Sheriff, new jail? Don’t believe the hype

February 9, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Rozann Greco and Bill Martin, Guest Columnists
Reproduced from Press and Sun Bulletin (Binghamton), Feb 9 2024 Opinion

Make no mistake: there is a new sheriff in town. David Harder, who ruled over the jail for 25 years, has finally left office. The election of Frederick Akshar gave us a very different person: 35 years younger, more energetic, an accomplished politician, and a hands-on officer. Recently, Akshar distributed a first-year progress report. It was big news, extensively covered by local media.

There have been changes in the jail. Visitation hours have been extended to every weekday. This comes after Sheriff Harder lost a lawsuit and was forced to reopen visitation hours. Medically assisted treatment for substance users, so needed as we face an opioid epidemic, is now in place. This too was also the result of years of protests by families and community activists and is required by a new state law. Still, recent investigations reveal, however, continuing serious medical mistreatment at the jail.

A new food contract has also been signed, and fruit for the first time in memory has appeared on jail trays. Here again, this comes after widespread demands by families and hunger strikes by the incarcerated.

Akshar also celebrated the hiring of 31 new correctional officers. But was this wise? The number of persons in the jail has steadily fallen from over 500 to around 300. Here the county missed an opportunity to right-size the jail and transfer funds and jobs to county services where they’re most needed − particularly the Department of Social Services, which has over 80 unfilled, poorly-paid staff positions. One unannounced result of all this new funding: the yearly cost to keep one person in the jail is now the highest ever: $97,000. For one person the county could pay full tuition for 18 students at SUNY Broome.

Equally puzzling is Akshar’s claim that the county saved money by his discovery of $250,000 in overcharges by the private medical provider. Isn’t this simply theft from the county treasury? How long has this been going on? Why are there not criminal charges? Shouldn’t there be a county audit of jail finances as activists have long demanded?

More financial losses are coming. The Sheriff’s office and the county have recently lost two more abuse lawsuits, and more are underway. One settlement discovered a blatant coverup by jail officials of the beating of a young Black man. Another settlement required extensive changes in how the jail treats sexuality and gender, from housing locations to medicines to verbal, physical and sexual harassment. None of the specific policy changes have found themselves into the new jail handbook. None of the 16 officers mentioned have been disciplined or fired. What stops more abuse and more lawsuits?

Progress? Only in the sense of modernizing mass incarceration in response to a decade of protest by community organizations, and further centralizing county health care and finances in the jail for which there is little if any oversight. This is not a model for the future.

Rozann Greco is an Endicott resident and Bill Martin is a Johnson City resident.

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(Links added to original text)

Appended note: And on the same day the newspaper published another (yes another, just by chance?) op-ed by the Sheriff on how in partnership with local NGOs he protects female domestic violence victims–this from the man who, after a Black woman with a substance use problem miscarried under his care, stated to the press “that if it were up to him, he would charge X with the child’s death, but that is no longer an option due to New York’s 2019 Reproductive Health Act.” Yes, he is part of the fetal personhood movement, which pursues laws that grant fetuses the same legal rights as any person with the aim of making all abortions murder. The 2019 Reproductive Health Act protects access to reproductive rights throughout the state after Roe vs Wade was overturned]

Taej’on Vega Wins ‘I can’t breathe’ vs Broome County

October 1, 2023 / / 3 Comments

“Strip, N-word!” That’s what Broome County correctional officers told the prone and handcuffed African American teenager as they dragged him across the floor to his cell two years ago. It got more brutal quickly, leaving Taej’on Vega naked, badly bruised, unable to breathe, coughing up blood, and sexually and mentally traumatized. And yet: a courageous mother and son triumphed in the end against all odds.

For this week a court decision came down and their lawsuit against Broome County and Correctional Officers was successful. The County and its officers were judged to have violated Taej’on’s rights and deliberately covered up evidence of the beating. A financial settlement is yet to come.

It has been a long road to some justice. At the time of the beating Taej’on’s grievance was found to have “no merit” and denied–as is almost always the case. Despite being aware of his mental health issues, he was like many others denied the multiple medications he was prescribed prior to entering the jail in October 2019. Like all, incarceration meant he was no longer working to support his family.

In the wake of the assault, unlike others, his mother managed to take video snapshots of his bruised body and pressed his case. Members of Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST), including the author, visited Mr. Vega as part of a program that visits vulnerable persons who don’t have family nearby and often need a watchful presence. Just wrote letters to legislative leaders, calling for investigations. And then in June lawyers for Legal Services of Central New York filed the lawsuit against the county and the correctional officers, including the sergeant in charge at the time.

Doom County Jail?

It is rare that families have the resources or find lawyers to press such cases. But they keep coming.

Makyyla Holland recently won a stunning award for abuse in the jail, with the jail and county now required to roll back discriminatory practices, rules, and cultures against trans persons and LGBTQ persons generally. Several families have won wrongful death suits, with the Husar family’s $5 million lawsuit outstanding. An investigation by NY Focus reporters this month revealed that the introduction of more medically assisted treatment in the jail has been an abusive disaster. As the headline put it, “‘Doom County Jail’: Dysfunction Plagues Program for Incarcerated Opioid Users.”

What are the incarcerated and their families to do? Medically assisted treatment in the jail for substance users was, after all, announced with great fanfare as a major successful reform. The Holland settlement relies upon persons filing grievances as the sole enforcement guarantee. Yet those with problems like Taej’on or Makylla still only support legal claims if they exhaust, and get exhausted by, the grievance process. The evidence is clear: incarcerated persons have long been denied access to grievance slips as long reported by advocates to the local press. In 2022 an assessment of the grievance process published in the community newspaper Binghamton Bridge found that in the previous six months not a single grievance filed in the jail was forwarded to the oversight review committee of the State Commission of Correction (SCOC)—which rejected 99.7% of grievances that reached it.

The recently released 2022 Broome County Sheriff’s Annual Report confirms this continues: in the last year the vast majority of filed grievances were rejected outright, with not a single grievance about the staff, legal issues, or grievance polices and services being passed upward to the SCOC. One grievance about medical services was forwarded. And officers named in the lost lawsuits and settlements remain unpunished, in the jail, and on full pay. Lacking any real reform, how will abusive, transphobic and homophobic officers still on the payroll enforce the Holland settlement?

Indeed it is worth recalling that in the year before Taej’on’s beating, the County and the past Sheriff lost a major lawsuit over abuse of youth in the jail. As one expert witness who visited and talked to persons in the jail testified at the time,

“All the juveniles spoke of the harsh and abusive practices [of] the Correctional Officers (COs) with many identifying in exquisite detail the beatings they endured at the hands of the COs’…. [a] youth spoke of an incident in which he was restrained in a restraint chair and then pepper sprayed while he was restrained. Still another youth spoke of the COs carrying batons they used to beat the kids; they reported that the COs refer to the baton as their “n-word [sic] beaters.”

As more lawsuits are lost by the County and the abuse continues, it is time for elected officials to exercise their oversight powers and investigate, including visiting the jail unannounced as they are legally empowered to do. Can they speak for basic human rights, and report their findings to the community? We all also need to thank the Taej’ons and Makyylas for their bravery and persistence.  

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