Video story-February 23, 2025
On Sunday afternoon, Correctional Officers on strike across from the Attica Correctional Facility had community supporters stopping by to visit for most of the day. Video News Service caught up with a couple from Marilla who arrived on their snowmobile to show their support.
Since last week, the signs have grown, the tents have multiplied, and the Correctional Officers have dug in for the long haul.
A veteran officer expressed why they are showing up in support.
“I’ve got to be because my brothers and sisters are out here, this is their future. I mean, they’ve got to be in here for the next 10,15, 20 years, and the state is asking them to do a job that they don’t have the tools to do. And I mean, it’s really an unlawful order on the governor’s part. It’s like being ordered to dig a hole and being told you can’t use a shovel. You know, what are you supposed to dig with? You know, your bare hands. You know, it’s just, it’s silliness.”
“Law enforcement is all about giving consequences to offenders, if you have a child and they’re misbehaving, and you don’t do anything, guess what’s going to happen? The misbehavior is not going to stop. It’s going to accelerate. It’s going to grow. It’s going to get worse. And if you continually do not discipline them for what they’re doing, they’re just going to keep misbehaving, and their misbehavior is going to become more blatant, more obnoxious, more dangerous. Now, here we have essentially children in grown up bodies. We have men who are maybe mentally and emotionally children because they were raised without discipline. They were raised without structure. They were raised without respect for authority, seniority, anything. They were raised without courtesy. They were raised without being taught how to show respect, how to work for a living the whole nine yards. So, in their minds, they still have kind of a childish mentality. And they need discipline. They need structure. And New York State, has said, we’re not allowed to give them any more discipline or structure. They can do whatever they want, and that’s why staff assaults are way up.”
According to the veteran CO, staffing at Attica is usually about 600, the veteran CO says they are down by about 75-100 officers. Overtime hours pile up for many COs as the state continues to run all the programs inside the prison.
The veteran CO says there are things Governor Hochul could do.
“One thing that she could do is she could say from this point forward, for the foreseeable future, all facilities will run on holiday scheduling. And what the holiday scheduling means is we won’t have all the programs running in these facilities all day, which they’re currently mandating tons of officers to work. So that will reduce the mandates. We’ll still have tons of mandates, but it will reduce them, because we won’t be forced to keep open all these programs that we don’t need to have open. We should be doing basic, prison functions.”
Formal mediation between the State and NYSCOPBA will begin tomorrow Monday, February 24, 2025.