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ESSEX COUNTY JAIL UPDATE

To All Members & Other Interested Parties:
 

As you know the PBA has been making numerous complaints to the Essex County

 Freeholder Board on the dangerous conditions that exist in our jail. Because of those complaints as well as complaints from citizen groups, the freeholders formed a committee to study the problems and allow us to speak in a public forum as well as provide us closed sessions with the board so that we could discuss more security sensitive issues without the public or the press in the room.

We had one of those closed sessions immediately following the open session on October 6, 2004. In the closed session only myself, Tyrone Williams, Lt. Swiegart and our attorney Bill Sayers were allowed to be present.

We did our best to get our issues and concerns out and I firmly believe that the freeholder board clearly sees that our problems are legitimate.

On the other hand, County attorney Frank Giamtomasi continues to downplay our issues and attack the credibility of the union and the integrity of the officers.

At this point I'm convinced that there is no hope of the administration admitting their mistakes and deal with the union on a level playing field but nevertheless I'm satisfied that our message is getting out despite the personal attacks from Giantomasi not only at that meeting but in recent newspaper articles.

The so called experts who also testified at the meeting were unimpressive to say the least. They couldn't even answer a direct question on whether or not the administration followed their recommendations on the jail transition but we all know the truth. The experts were hired to make it look good then the administration did what they wanted despite the experts ideas and warnings and the jail transition was a complete failure. Plain and simple.

The subjects at hand are staffing and security, but Giantomasi insisted on speaking about contraband being found in the jail and then made some careless remarks about the so called boxing match that allegedly occurred to try to belittle us as usual. 

His intent seems to be that if he attacks our credibility, integrity and work ethic then the freeholders will stop paying attention to us, but its not working.

The past four meetings have given us the opportunity to get a lot of information out and I fully expect to have at least one more meeting to put some closure to our issues at hand.

I assure you that I wont rest until officers feel as safe and secure as they can possibly be within a correctional facility. As I always said and its worth repeating.... We fully recognize the dangers of the job and there are no guarantees that violence wont occur but most of the violence that has occurred in this jail since it opened is "avoidable" and that makes a world of difference.

The type of danger and violence that can be avoided with proper training that we all know we never received and the administration giving us the staffing and resources to take the jail back from these violent inmates who are bent on hurting officers as well as hurting each other. 

Its time that the administration stops blaming the officers and accusing us of some sort of conspiracy to purposely make this jail fail. I'm sorry if the jail transition failure was embarrassing to them and the fact that the State Commissioner of Corrections sent us two new bosses, Faunce & Glover at the request of the PBA to bail the county out of the biggest mess in the history of corrections, but the jails transition failure was not and will never be the fault of the officers.

Its a sad fact that many officers opted to retire rather then work in these dangerous conditions and in fact we may have a few bad apples who bring in contraband. It may even be civilians who are bringing the contraband in, but if and when those people are identified, I fully expect them to be dealt with in the proper legal manner and rightfully so, but in the mean time we cant allow those few bad apples to spoil the bunch.

99% of us are here to do the job and all we ask is for protection. The administration needs to be concerned with those of us who do the job and stop using those few bad apples as their excuse to treat correction officers like second class citizens.   

Giantomasi even went so far as to say that the only reason the PBA complains is to get the weekend shift back. Those of us who work in the jail know that the weekend shift was in fact a great benefit for us and did in fact keep sick time down, keep morale up, create more staffing during critical times Monday-Friday and less staffing during non critical times Saturday & Sunday which worked perfectly for 24 years, but our concerns for officer safety and the complaints made so far have nothing to do with schedules.

We still have many arguments and hearings ahead of us with the DOP and PERC regarding the changes of our schedules and the layoffs but It wont matter what schedules we work if custody officers are not protected and inmates aren't properly controlled.

I don't care what you think or what you heard about our schedules being changed to better provide the needed staffing, but here's the truth.

The truth is that correction officers were and still are looked at by this administration as spoiled and non-supportive and our schedules were changed and officers were laid off to hurt and punish us for not supporting them. I can only hope that I'm able to prove this in a hearing.   

The intentions of the PBA are completely honorable and without conspiracies or ulterior motives. The sooner the administration admits their mistakes and recognizes correction officers as a viable part of this county and addresses our issues without contempt, then and only then can we move forward.

Until then I'll continue to remind the employees and the taxpayers of this county that while several accomplishments have been made by this administration around the county, they continue to drop the ball in the law enforcement community.

If they paid more attention to crime, gangs, and officer safety in the jails, courts and out on the street, and some but less attention to how green the grass is in county parks, and how nice the parking lot is at Hendricks Field Golf Course we'll all be better off.

What good are clean parks when gang members made those same parks into their meeting places and crime havens.

Please read the text of the article below that appeared in the Essex Journal this past week. As you read you'll notice that the freeholders see the problems and they care. For that we owe them our trust and support.

As always, stay as safe as possible and thank you for your continued support.

Joe Amato
President, PBA Local 382
Essex County Corrections
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Jail Article October 14, 2004 

The fourth Public Safety/Penal Committee meeting investigating the new county jail discussed the methods by which inmates are guarded by corrections officers and also raised concerns among freeholders about the hearing's progress.      
It was a well-attended meeting. Hundreds of concerned citizens jammed the meeting room in the Hall of Records building in Newark on Oct. 6, causing it to be filled beyond its fire capacity.
Some attendees sat, others stood, and some were in the hallway, but all seemed to be listening intently to matters that related to the $416 million jail on Doremus Avenue in Newark.
The concept of direct supervision, a system in which officers and inmates interact without barriers, raised questions and arguments about its effectiveness in the Essex County jail.
PBA 382 President Joe Amato said that officers must supply everything from a blanket to a book for inmates in direct supervision.
"Direct supervision is supposed to give officers full observation of inmates, but this also gives inmates an opportunity to study officers and their moves," he said.
Amato explained that inmates are living in glass-enclosed pods, which "help inmates to see that there is a shortage of officers."
"That is why officers are getting assaulted on a regular basis," he said. "How many officers need to get hurt for the county to do away with direct supervision?"
The open-interaction philosophy in prisons has been around for about 20 years and is utilized all over the country. But, according to the National Institute of Corrections Web site, direct supervision is not a system that is adequate for every inmate; about 10 percent of prisoners, according to the Web site, cannot function non-violently in such an environment.
"Direct supervision is proven to be the safest and works effectively with an urban population of inmates," said County Counsel Frank Giantomasi at the meeting last week.
"Direct supervision is not used with inmates that are locked in their cells for disciplinary problems because they are not able to be with others," said the jail's warden, Larry Glover. "There is a small population of inmates that are a part of indirect supervision."
During the meeting, freeholders questioned if officers were being given proper training before being placed in an open environment with inmates.
"I want to make sure that the officers understand what they have to do," Freeholder Carol Clark said. "Inmates and officers need to know that they can carry this out."
Clark added that she doubts that officers have been trained enough to make direct supervision work.
Speaking as an educator, Clark said, "Open-space classrooms were not what they were cracked up to be. ... East Orange stayed with this method for longer than they should have and spent far more money to close it and go back to closed classrooms. We just don't know if direct supervision can work."
Freeholder Muriel Shore said that this method for monitoring prisoners should have been tested before it was implemented.
"We should've done a pilot to see how it works with our population of prisoners," she said. "Just because other jails use this philosophy doesn't mean their population of inmates mirrors ours."
She said that in order for direct supervision to work, other officers need to be above the pods looking in.
"We don't have a team of officers that can stand around," said Glover. "It is not cost effective."
Shore said that forcing a model on people, "if they perceive danger to themselves," will never work.
"If I do not feel comfortable, no way are you going to put me in a locked area with no resources," she said.
Giantomasi said that officers had time to adjust from a closed to an open-inmate environment.
"We had no time," guards in the audience yelled. "What a bunch of liars," someone shouted out.
In conversations subsequent to the hearing, some of the freeholders wondered if the jail talks were making progress on the long-debated issues.
Shore said she was very dissatisfied with consultants Bruce Orenstein and Robert Goble of Carter & Goble, who explained to the board the usefulness of direct supervision.
"These consultants were giving us outdated information," she said. "They spoke of articles from 1987 to back up their reasoning. And, they had one foot out the door before we could talk to them. I was very disappointed with them."
Although Shore said she is skeptical regarding the amount of progress that these meetings are bringing to the jail, she also said that she is optimistic that the freeholders are moving in the right direction.
"I am hearing a lot of good things about the jail's director, Scott Fuance," she said. "There is talk from the county that it will hire more officers to guard the prisoners, and some of the current guards are saying that they can work with this leadership."
Clark stated that, if nothing else, the jail hearings are good for information gathering and open communication between the interested parties.
"These meetings allow the officials to get in touch and hear both sides," she said. "It is our responsibility as freeholders to make the best out of these sessions and come up with a resolution that both sides can work with." She added that Ralph Caputo, who is chairman of the committee and in charge of the meetings, "is trying very hard to keep it from being just a finger-pointing session."
Freeholder Patricia Sebold said that any change, especially in a correctional facility, is "tough, but in time I am optimistic that it will work out."
Caputo said that a lot had been accomplished during the course of the jail hearings and that one more may be held to fully assess the situation.
"Employees had to vent," he said. "It's important that people understand the investment. Everyone wants a successful jail but both sides need to pull together. It's been a healthy process."
Caputo said that the Public Safety/Penal Committee is the only public forum that exists about the correctional facility. He added that everyone put a lot of energy into these hearings and he hopes that the outcome will be a successful one. "The administration had to build the facility, but we only had to listen about it," he said.
"The current administration attacks the previous one for problems with the jail, but they are forgetting that Joseph DiVincenzo, the current administrator, was once freeholder president," said Amato. "So, in effect, they should also blame themselves because the current administration was yesterday's freeholder board."
The Public Safety/Penal Committee meeting ended with a closed session on personnel issues concerning the jail.

End Article