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BY JOE AMATO
COMMENTARY
As we were informed by our State PBA President and the State PBA Director of Governmental Affairs at our January PBA meeting, we are currently being faced with major attacks in Trenton on our terms and conditions of employment, pension, benefits and collective bargaining.
Please be advised that this has been a very hard fought issue and if these bills pass, it will completely change the face and the worthiness of our jobs into the future and into retirement.
The entire state, county and local workforce have become the targets of the taxpayers aggression and our self-serving elected officials are catering to the taxpayers misinformed and uneducated demands.
On a local issue, our county executive (Essex) was recently quoted in a local news article saying that if our current contract arbitration doesn't go his way he will appeal it all the way to the supreme court.
Our Number 1 top earning county politician in the entire state of New Jersey, whose personal PUBLIC paycheck almost doubled in less than eight years, who employs an army of nonessential PUBLIC employees in his administration, all earning well over 6 figure salaries, not to mention a fleet of taxpayer funded cars for personal use and even PUBLICLY EMPLOYED personal drivers was also quoted as saying that we, (rank and file public employees) are living above our means. Yes, I'm very serious. You can't joke about that level of hypocrisy.
It's imperative that we as correction officers/law enforcement officers remain supportive of our local and State PBA leadership to see us through this storm of political hypocrisy. It's been very clear, as it normally is if you follow the news on these issues that the State PBA is the only "police union" who is taking aggressive action in getting our side of the story out to the taxpayers.
Aside from these issues mentioned above, we still have the privatization issue brewing in Camden County and which has now taken hold in Monmouth County as well, where their freeholder board was considering a proposal to remove the jail from the control of their Sheriff and seeking to privatize it, but for now, their Sheriff was able to maintain control through a recent freeholder vote, but the privatization issue is still being studied in Monmouth.
As for Camden County, I have some good news. CEC has officially withdrawn their application to build a private facility in the city of Camden and I firmly believe that the pressure put on both CEC and Camden County elected officials by the PBA and community based groups was key in CEC's withdrawal. So for now we can rest easy, but remain skeptical until we have a law in place that officially bars the privatization of jails and prisons in New Jersey, because despite the withdrawal in Camden, CEC (Delaney Hall) is not going away any time soon.
I would also like to thank those in Local 382 who have shown support for our brothers and sisters of Local 351 and have attended our joint meetings and rallies. Your support truly made a difference.
As for our own local issue with CEC and what we call... "Back Door Privatization"...Over the past few months, Delaney & Logan Hall, are being used to house record numbers of county inmates who are now under privatized care for all intents and purposes.
It has also come to my attention that classification scores are possibly being wrongfully manipulated to lower the classification on many inmates who would normally fall into the "maximum" category as to reclassify them as medium or lower, which in turn allows these reclassified inmates to be herded into Delaney & Logan Hall.
Is this practice of reclassifying inmates to make them eligible to be housed in a reentry facility legal? I don't have that answer yet, but its highly questionable and a clear safety risk when we consider the following facts...
At least one of the three state prison bound inmates who committed murder behind the walls of DH last year came to us as a maximum inmate and was reclassified to medium just before we sent him to DH and just days later...we all know how that story ended. A man incarcerated in DH for traffic violations was murdered.
We also seem to have a new inmate disciplinary process in place connected to DH and LH where as inmates who refuse to go to DH or LH are charged and put into detention cells and basically they remain there until they concede to the transfer to the reentry facilities.
I'm not an inmate advocate by any means, but it would be a concern if and when the time comes that an officer is injured after dealing with an irate inmate who is being placed into detention (23 Hour A DAY Lock Down & Loss of All Privileges) for no other reason, but because he or she is afraid to leave the protected confines of the jail and put into the uncontrolled lunacy of Delaney Hall.
These are the types of questionable inmate issues that caused our jail system in the past to be put under federal indictment for many years and threatened with millions of dollars in fines, but I guess now that the Federal Consent Order has been lifted and we no longer have a government appointed Inmate Advocate in the jail watching our every move, we are going back to our reckless ways.
Obviously these practices are put in place to keep the pre-adjudicated county inmate population low and hidden in these two private rehab facilities and as to impress upon the federal government that we can accommodate their growing housing needs for Federal Marshal and ICE inmates, even if it means threatening county inmates with unnecessary and abusive disciplinary procedures, but at what real cost?
Federal Marshal and ICE officials have been extremely impressed with our willingness to house hundreds of their inmates, but they may not realize the unsafe manner in which our inmates are sold off to a private vendor so that county jail cells can be emptied at their request.
Was the federal revenue worth an inmate being murdered in DH by three recidivist violent criminals who shouldn't have been there in the first place?
Will the federal revenue be worth possible officer casualties when DH explodes in violence and we are called upon to bail out these "Correctional Amateurs" who run DH?
The day is coming my friends and the more violent, gang affiliated and prison bound inmates that we reclassify and pack into these two fake jails...the closer that day will be and then I want to see how great the Federal Marshal Service and ICE Officials will think we are when those high within the county decision making process are running for cover.
Joe Amato is President of PBA Local 382
ALSO BY JOE AMATO
Crime does pay in New Jersey with exploitation of inmates
Jersey's private jail industry: Where inmates become a commodity and taxpayers remain in the dark
