The Monroe County Commissioners meeting this week was again crowded with a larger number of officers who showed up to plead their case on the working conditions at the Monroe County Correctional Facility.

“It is egregious how you guys have handled this,” said Officer Don Kubik, who is also the union steward for the officers.

The complaints from officers:

• Having new applicants that have only two weeks of training, and are not prepared, making it more hazardous for the officer in charge. Not only does the officer have to be vigilant for their safety, they have to watch out for the new employee who has only had two weeks of training.

• When transporting an inmate, the protocol is two guards that are armed, but many times only one of the officers is armed. That means if the inmate manages to get the weapon away from the armed guard there is little the two guards can do to protect themselves.

• The COVID-19 protocol that is lacking in all areas of the facility. Positive inmates are mixed in with healthy inmates and the officers are exposed to it as well. COVID tests are not a routine procedure, officers said.

• Due to lack of employees, for the past two years or more officers are mandated to work several shifts in a row so the jail has enough coverage. If the officer doesn’t stay for a mandated shift, there are consequences for the officer.

• The officers asked why they don’t advertise sign on bonuses like other correctional facilities to encourage applicants to apply. Applicants also have to pay for the required physical. The surrounding correctional facilities offer sign up bonuses and pay for the physical.

• When knives or other items that could be a weapon go missing from the kitchen, the required mandatory search is seldom is done.

Several officers asked what was being done about the missing knives and choppers, and Commissioner John Christy told the officers that Joseph McCoy, Deputy Warden of Security told him the search was made. The officers were adamant there was absolutely no search done.

• Kubik became furious and accused the commissioners of not doing their job correctly by not following through and checking if the search was ever made.

Commissioners

The Monroe County Commissioners are part of the prison board and weeks have gone by since the officers first came to the commissioners.

The officers and union representatives have sent many emails over the past two years, pleading with the commissioners to do something about the situation in the jail.

None of the emails were answered, Kubik said, bringing a stack of emails with him to a recent meeting.

At the first meeting Kubik brought copies of all the emails the officers sent over the pass two years.

“We’re willing to listen or we have been willing to listen up until now. But there’s not a darn thing we can do as commissioners. It’s the prison board that sets the policies and it is the prison board that hires and fires,” John Moyer, the chairman of the Monroe County Prison Board, said Friday.

He said the prison board meeting is where the issues should be addressed and he plans to explain that to the officers at the next commissioners meeting.

“The commissioners are not the only people that make up the board, and so jail employees should be requesting to attend the prison board meeting to address their grievances, Moyer said.

He said “Technically, we’re not even a majority of the prison board because the president judge is also supposed to serve.”

Seven members are on the prison board, but according to Moyer, President Judge Margherita Patti-Worthington has excused herself and she hasn’t been at a meeting since he became a commissioner.

“So that leaves six, the three commissioners, the sheriff, the district attorney and the controller, but it is usually the three commissioners, the sheriff, the controller, and very rarely the district attorney attends the meeting,” Moyer said.

The issues

Moyer does agree that it’s the shortness of staffing that’s creating a lot of these issues and said, “When we are asked what are we doing about it, all I can say is the issues that are brought up, we take to the prison board,” he said.

Moyer said, “We are more staffed now than when Kubik first started coming. We are supposed to have 122. That’s our full complement. Right now we have 102 and four that are in training that will be out of training next Friday. So that will bring us to 106 but that’s assuming nobody quits between now and then.”

Moyer also addressed the COVID-19 cases. He was told two prisoners and one staff member have been ill, but within the past three weeks, it’s been as high as 11.

“It’s down to three at this point in time and when you figure that you’ve got over 500 people, well, close to 500 people, because we are sitting with about 415 inmates right now plus all of the kitchen staff and corrections officers etc.,” Moyer said. “I’m saying we have at least 450 people that are in a confined environment, so if you put it in perspective, three out of say 450 in an enclosed environment is a lot better than it could be if nothing were being done.”

Addressing another issue, Moyer said overtime is not mandatory.

“I pulled a sample of the last 18 weeks up through this Sept. 30, and over that 18 weeks there have been just a little over 18,000 hours of overtime. Now, that’s far more than it should be,” he said.

Moyer compared the week with the most overtime and the week that has the least overtime. In those two weeks, both times of mandatory overtime accounted for less than 25% of all the overtime that was paid.

“If you listen to it sounds like 90% of the overtime that’s being paid out is because you have to work overtime. They are not telling you that you have to work overtime whether you want to or not. But it’s 0.5 percentage, still a significant number, but it’s not anything like everybody that signs up for overtime is forced into,” he said

Earlier this year, the sheriff volunteered to send deputies to do some of the transports to take it off the backs of the CEOs because the corrections officers were short staffed. “A grievance was filed against it by the union on May 22 because it didn’t match the collective bargaining contract off so we backed off,” Moyer said.