DOC’s shortcomings

To the editor:

After reading Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association President Benny Boscio's recent statement contesting U.S. District Judge Swain's finding that the department is overstaffed and still failing to comply with its overall responsibilities to enforce care, custody and control, my question to Mr. Boscio is: how could he claim that the department is understaffed when there are  more than 5,000 uniform active staffers, excluding captains, and assistant deputy wardens? Instead of blaming outside forces for defunding the department by not hiring more staff, how about dusting off the uniform staffers who are not being properly and fully used?

In headquarters and empty borough jails, hundreds of uniform staffers are idly taking up space sitting on posts either answering phones or just staring out the window. In the Security Division, there are many officers, captains and assistant deputy wardens occupying no-inmate contact posts that could be filled with medically monitored officers who are still recovering from their injuries and are better suited holding those posts.

As for the physical and sexual assaults that are inflicted upon staff by the inmate population, the only parties to blame for that are the staffers and their unions who have remained silent about these crimes and the supervisory staff that allowed and even encouraged it to go on for far too long.

Because so many staffers have been suspended, fired and even imprisoned for proactively doing their jobs, I watched the department's workforce  go from proactive to reactive and now completely uninvolved, knowing that saying or doing anything to remedy wrongdoing will only result in punitive action by their own chain of command, which I have observed more times than I could count and became a victim of myself.

Celestino P. Monclova, III

The writer is a retired DOC officer