COBA Rep Wants More Protection For COs

Correction Officers need more input, training and especially respect if violence, particularly against officers, in city jails is to drop. So testified the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association’s legislative chairman, Frederic Fusco, at a City Council hearing Feb. 3.

While the 10,000-member union is not strictly opposed to discussing wholesale reforms, such as those envisioned in closing Rikers Island and building borough-based jails, city officials—within the Council, in the Mayor’s Office and within the Department of Correction and the Board of Correction—need to provide Correction Officers with additional tools, such as increased authority, if violence is to be quelled, Mr. Fusco, a 15-year CO, told the Council’s Criminal Justice Committee.