On March 26^th at 2:30 pm community organizations in Broome County had a car protest rally outside the grounds of the shared county jail and emergency service facility.  A press conference was held on site, and a speaker shouted out to a rousing crowd in their cars, one person to a car.  A  media video report is here.

The pressing demand: “Release Them Now”

Confronted by the coronavirous, community organizations, sheriffs, and public prosecutors across the state and country are calling for jails to release and safely rehouse as many persons as possible.  They know that jails are deadly incubators of the virus, and that it always spreads out into the community. Individuals from Citizen Action, Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier, and Truth Pharm called on the county to:

• Immediately release anyone at high risk for infection
• Release anyone held on non-violent charges
• Provide testing, sanitation supplies, medical treatment, and adequate nutrition
• Make phone/video calls free and end predatory commissary pricing
• Ensure those coming home have a discharge and treatment plan, including medical and housing resources
• Implement fully bail reforms, no roll back
• Provide transparent, public dissemination of these measures

Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier
#FREEBCJ

Justice.Southern.Tier@gmail.com
   www.justicest.com
 @BingamtonJUST
FB: tinyurl.com/JUST-ST

May 23 2019 Rally for Medical Justice

Who Wrote Rob Card’s Death Sentence at the BC Jail?

Harder Falls, Salladin Barton Vindicated

Nov 7: Public Hearing: “The BC Jail on Trial: Voices from Inside”, media report and JUST objectives & demands

JUST statement n Coronavirus 3 14 20 

Bail Reform Barely Began and now in Albany they are trying to take it Away !

Join Us to Stop this ! 

Stand Up for the For the New Reform

Pack the Courts Action –

 Kick Off for the Court Watch 2020 

  Wednesday January 15th – 8:30 AM (yes in the morning)

In Front of County Court -65 Hawley St Bing

   Court Watch Kick-Off 2020 – #DemandJusticeBC    

We want to have a big crowd so we can demonstrate that we support the new Reforms! We will begin our Court Watch that day to assure that Broome County courts are implementing the new reforms ! (see info attached) 

 Court Watch Kick-Off 2020 – #DemandJusticeBC

Kick-Off is Wed, 1/15/20 @ 8:30a – BROOME COUNTY COURT

New York State implemented sweeping reforms eliminating cash bail in majority of non violent offenses. We need to be in the courts to hold all accountable to assure the new laws are being implemented fully.

Fear and Loathing among Mass Incarcerators

(reposted from www.justtalk.blog, August 28, 2019)

County Sheriff David Harder can hide no more.  The chickens can, it turns out, come home to roost.

For years Justice and Unity for the Southern Tier (JUST) and allied community organizations have been documenting, publicizing, and protesting medical abuse and deaths at the Broome County Jail.  In 2017 over a dozen community organizations issued an action plan calling for an immediate investigation into medical abuse at the jail, arguing that

Too often, death is how incarceration ends in the Broome County Jail. In 2011, Alvin Rios died “face down and shaking” in his cell. New York State faulted Broome County’s medical provider, Correctional Medical Care (CMC), which between 2009 and 2011 was implicated in nine deaths in jail facilities state wide. Since then, conditions have not improved: death has become even more common.

The County and CMC would eventually lose the lawsuit brought by Rios’ family.  Questioned about multiple deaths and the lawsuit, County Sheriff David Harder kissed it off, telling the media that deaths “will happen.” The county’s response:  it gave an award for excellence to CMC in 2014 and renewed its contract.  By the next year Harder was unwilling to even acknowledge yet another death, brazenly repeating he didn’t have to report it. As for changing any practices at the jail, there was “no reason to.” 

And so the deaths and abuse continued. In 2015, Salladin Barton, developmentally disabled and well known and liked on the streets of Binghamton, pleaded with his family: “The guards are going to kill me. You gotta get me outta here.”  He died shortly thereafter.  In 2018, the Sheriff and the County lost a class action suit filed by Legal Services of Central New York on behalf of abused youth. Early this year, Rob Card, denied basic medical treatment, told his family he was going to be killed in the jail, and died in mysterious circumstances.  Secretly released from custody by an unknown legal and court order, Card was removed from the jail, on a gurney and in coma, so he could die in a hospital–and off the books of the jail.

The families of the incarcerated have never accepted this, and never stopped pressing forward. Barton’s family filed a lawsuit.  JUST and other organizations joined in, forwarding continuous evidence of abuse to the County Executive, County legislators, and New York State officials.  Rallies and protests were organized outside county offices, the jail, and, most recently the UHS offices of Dr. Butt, the jail’s longstanding doctor.

On August 29^th over a dozen local community groups, propelled forward by Progressive Leaders of Tomorrow, will be rallying outside the jail to protest rampant abuse, racism, and deaths in the jail.

Harder’s response to all charges of medical abuse and specifically the lawsuit brought by Barton’s mother:  “It’s a bunch of crap.”

Well, this week Harder and the County can hide no more.  For on August 21^st a Federal Court judge issued a blistering judgement in favor of Salladin’s Barton’ mother, Rose Carter. Turning back County lawyers’ calls to dismiss the suit, Judge David Hurd bluntly noted that the county had “supplied precious little material” in support of their claims. 

The judge’s conclusion is stark: “as a result of the ongoing failure by CMC to provision appropriate medical care to inmates at the County Jail, and the failure by these policymaking defendants to intervene to correct it, Barton died while in the County’s custody.”

The Judge went much further, showing that that CMC’s medical problems had for years been reported to the Sheriff and County by both the State Commission of Correction and the Office of the Attorney General.  This was a legal breakthrough: this wasn’t the treatment of one person at issue but the knowing maltreatment of everyone caged in the jail.

Listen to the court:

“Sheriff Harder and/or Administrator Smolinsky, in their roles as policymakers for the Jail, possessed abundant knowledge about CMC’s egregious misconduct, knew that CMC was actively engaged in this misconduct at the County Jail, and yet failed to take any corrective action to prevent the substantial risk of harm those policies and practices posed to the inmates in their custody.

Among other things, Carter’s evidence shows that Sheriff Harder in particular

(1) knew CMC’s medical practices had caused at least one prior inmate death at the County Jail;

(2) was aware that the state’s investigation concluded that CMC’s improper medical practices caused or contributed to that death;

(3) had plenty of notice that CMC had not changed its medical policies or practices in any meaningful measure following that death; and nevertheless

(4) continued to approve of the County’s use of CMC without any modifications to its practices.”

Unlike in past cases, Sheriff Harder, Administrator Smolinksy, and Drs. Butt and Tinio are now personally liable.  

As the lawsuit now goes forward, Salladin Barton, on behalf of those who came before and after him, may at last get a measure of justice. The county and our elected officials may, at last, be forced to act.

As for Sheriff Harder, his departure, by impeachment or indictment, is long overdue

On Thursday August 29th over 125 people rallied against deaths and abuse at the  Broome County Jail.  The press release with the list of demands is here: Broome Jail Rally Press Release 8-20-2019.  Pictures from the rally are below; the media coverage includes this story:

Local organizations demand action, call for removal of prison administrators

Binghamton residents, students organize protest over prisoner mistreatment at Broome County Jail

By Erin Kagel and Jackson Galati – September 5, 2019

Jackson Galati/Contributing Photographer

Ten inmates in the Broome Country Jail have died in the past eight years. On Thursday, Binghamton community members, advocacy groups, University students and faculty gathered for the third year in a row to protest the deaths and call for better conditions in the facility.

The rally, held at the jail, is the most recent effort by community organizations to raise awareness and demand action in response to allegations of abuse, medical malpractice and negligence toward inmates of the Broome County Jail at the hands of corrections officers and Dr. Mahmood Butt, the jail’s health administrator.

Alexis Pleus, founder and executive director of Truth Pharm, one of the organizations coordinating the demonstration, said the removal of Sheriff David Harder and jail administrator Mark Smolinsky would be the only way to begin to solve mistreatment of inmates at the jail. Pleus cited examples of inmates being denied medications, proper nutrition and privacy behind the facility’s walls.

“They’re not taking care of inmates — they’re letting people die inside that jail,” Pleus said. “It’s about four times the national average of deaths in a jail of its size. We need somebody in there who recognizes human rights.”

In the past, Harder has vigorously denied claims of mistreatment within the jail, which he directly oversees. His only comment on the protest was that it had disappointed him.

“It’s unfortunate because the people had no idea what they were protesting,” Harder said. “This is not unusual for the organizations involved to spread false information. The people there had no idea what they were saying, and they were believing lies.”

Nearly 200 protesters held signs and stood along the road leading up to the Broome County Jail, periodically breaking out into chants of “No justice, no peace” and “Black lives matter.” Then, on a stage made of wooden pallets stacked on top of milk crates, paired with a PA system, several speakers shared their stories and thoughts on the jail.

One of the speakers, Talon Thomas, 27, of Binghamton, was incarcerated with Salladin Barton, a 35-year-old man who died in solitary confinement at the Broome County Jail in January 2015 while waiting two years for his day in court. Because his cell walls were made of glass, Thomas was able to see Barton in an adjacent cell, and said Barton would often not receive his food or medication because he would be asleep during the times guards brought them out. On another occasion, Thomas said he witnessed Barton being restrained in a stretcher with a straightjacket and propped up behind the corrections officers, who left him there for hours without contact.

“People say ‘[Barton] had this problem, he had that problem’ and he may have had some mental issues, but he didn’t need to be in the Broome County Jail,” Thomas said. “He should have gotten some different type of treatment. He didn’t need to be in the box.”

In a lawsuit filed in the Broome County Supreme Court in 2015 against Harder and Smolinsky, Thomas claimed that throughout his 19-month incarceration, Barton was subject to beatings, deprived of medical care and verbally abused by officials.

“A court document came out [last] week where a judge held them responsible for the past death of Salladin Barton, so we know that even courts are holding them responsible for what goes on inside of the jail,” Pleus said. “They need to leave. We can’t trust them.”

In an Aug. 21 order given by U.S. District Judge David Hurd, the allegations of excessive force and intentional infliction of emotional distress were dismissed, while other allegations, including those of medical mistreatment, are still under review.

Dheiva Moorthy, a student organizer for both BU Progressives and the Frances Beal Society and a sophomore double-majoring in environmental studies and sociology, said she encouraged student involvement in the protest and was there to support the need for alternative reform for inmates.

“The level of neglect for people inside jails is insane,” Moorthy said. “I can’t even begin to tell you how much that hurts my heart, but what’s worse than that is that we don’t have a system of restorative community based healing justice for people. People do not need to be in cages for society to function effectively. People need to be given community healing and people need to be given radical love.”

After the speakers finished, the crowd marched up to the jail and continued their chants. Throughout the day, the prisoners who heard the chants would yell back to acknowledge the protesters. Once they were next to the jail, the group sang “Happy Birthday” for a friend of an organizer who is currently incarcerated in the facility.

“That fact that they heard us, that was the goal,” Pleus said. “Being able to give them a sense of hope is the best thing that we could have accomplished today. They heard us and that was the name of the rally, ‘When They Hear Us.’”

Roderick Douglass, social media coordinator for Progressive Leaders of Tomorrow (PLOT), another organizing group, closed the event by encouraging people to stay involved, find more events and programs to participate in and attend meetings for the involved organizations to continue building a stronger community.

“We’re not trying to get senators to pass laws necessarily — we’re trying to get people on board so that we can force and demand change,” Douglass said. “I promise you, no one is going to die in jail this week and that’s because a lot of people were out here complaining about it. The more people who shed light on what’s happening here, the safer the people are inside.”

Who’s the Lawbreaker? State Laws vs. County Jail Accounts

Bill Martin May 8, 2019

[reposted from justtalk blog]

On any given day there are hundreds of local families with loved ones caged in the Broome County jail. Talk to any of them and you quickly find out how costly it is to sustain the lives of those inside.  Want to call your neighbor locked up?  A recent call of less than 7 minutes to my local phone ran $11.00. Want to keep your young friend fed, when he, like others, tells you of the thin meals leaving him hungry all the time?  You need to send in money so he can buy Ramen from the jail commissary.  Want your partner to have soap or shampoo?

The incarcerated have to pay for it, one way or another.

Dig a little deeper, and you find out one reason for all these cross-cutting costs:  the corporation that profits from commissary deposits (Access Corrections) provides the food services (Trinity) and care packages (Access Securepak): it’s a vertical monopoly.  Try to bypass all this and mail in a bra, as permitted by state law? Forget that:  it is returned to Amazon, rejected by jail authorities.

Deposit money in your young Black friend’s account and you think he will then get to buy Ramen or shampoo?  Don’t count on it, for if he is sent to solitary for an unknown reason (as is often related to be the case), that’s a $25 charge, for each solitary trip, even if the charges are years old. Puzzled by why so many inmates have unkempt, wild hair?  Well, if your son needs a haircut and you have put money in his account, that’s a $10 charge.  He’d rather forego the haircut and spend the $10 on food, stamps or soap. Want the clothes, wallet and cell phone your daughter came into jail with mailed back to you? That’s a $20, $30, $40 charge. And so it goes.

Deposit $50 or $100 in their jail account, and your friend or loved one may not see a penny of it.

And hundreds of local residents linger for months and months in the jail, with 80% of them unconvicted.  Even if there are no fees or charges, many families don’t have the money to support and stay in contact with their loved ones.  This is a poor person’s, a debtors’ prison, particularly for Black and Latinx residents of the county.  Most inside are trapped by high bails, coming as they do from Binghamton, with a poverty rate (33%) much higher than New York City (20%).

Profiting from Hunger, Profiting from Inmates

But where does the money friends and family send in to jail accounts go?  It is hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. How much is charged in fees, and who uses the money? We don’t know. Some basic facts can however be uncovered, leading to yet more questions about the jail’s finances and the lack of local or state oversight.

The State Commission of Corrections mandates that jail and prison commissaries must be organized to produce “a modest return above costs.”  This doesn’t seem to apply to the Broome County Jail. The prices the Sherriff pays for goods are hidden, but surely must be bulk rates from what little we can find out. Compare jail prices to similar food and hygiene purchases at the local Walmart/Sam’s Club, where the profit rate is 2.1% on sales, and what does one find?

The jail’s profit ranges from 230% for a Bible to 560% for Ramen to 600% for a towel

And what was the” modest profit” produced? It’s hard to tell: we need more information on kick-backs from contracts and overall profits.  But records obtained in response to a freedom of information act request on profits show disbursements from commissary of over $102,000, on sales of $318,000.

If Sheriff Harder was Sam Walton, this $100,000+ would be reduced to less than $7,000.

Has the Sheriff not read state laws and regulations?

Such vampire profits contravene state law. The State Commission of Corrections sets clear regulations for county jails, including the provision of hygiene items, accounts for the incarcerated, and the handling of commissary sales and profits.  It is hard to see how Broome County follows them.

Consider the following, starting with commissary regulation 9 CRR-NY 7016.1.  The state is clear, “The prices of any items offered for sale shall be set by the sheriff… and will provide a modest return above costs.” So why are prices 2, 3, 4 times higher than costs, and profits so massively excessive?

Where do the profits go?  The state is clear here too: “Profits resulting from commissary sales shall be… utilized only for purposes of prisoner welfare and rehabilitation” (emphasis added).  That sounds good. But are they? Where did the profits from selling over $45,000 of cheap Ramen go? Were they spent on education materials?  Job training? Books?

It isn’t easy to tell. But here are a few of the items that the Sheriff reported being spent from commissary funds last year (taken from a Freedom of Information request):

Three garden tractors                       $ 9,357

Indigent hygiene, intro packs          $ 24,000

Agway lawn & garden supplies:        $ 2,238

Flares                                                 $ 2,523

Haircuts                                             $ 1,800

Copier lease:                                         $ 960

Tires and parts for a trailer                  $ 700

Garden tractors and lawn supplies as meeting welfare needs of the incarcerated?  There is no food garden, although one could be used.  Flares to light the way to further rehabilitation? Copier leases to provide for the incarcerateds’ welfare support, when persons inside already pay 25 to 50 cents per copy in the law library? And $24,000 for hygiene/indigent packs given to people when they are processed into the jail? Has anyone read state regulations 9 CRR-NY 7005.6NY-CRR and 9 CRR-NY 7005.4 that require the facility to provide  food, hygiene, and indigent haircuts at facility expense?

It gets worse.  This year the jail withdrew from commissary, for reasons that local citizens and even legislators cannot discern, the ability to buy from the commissary clean underwear, bras, and thermal shirts (necessary in the underheated cells of the jail where the use of blankets is banned during the day)–and this even though the most recent commissary list provided by the county shows them on sale.

Persons working in laundry confirm that underwear is old, stained by body fluids, and not adequately cleaned.  Bras, laundry workers have stated, are so old, torn, and dirty that they are almost unrecognizable as they go through the wash.  State regulation 9 CRR-NY 7005.7 clearly states that bras are permitted to be sent to women from outside vendors. But when even this was attempted from Amazon, an approved outside vendor, the jail refused delivery.

These miserable situations have been reported to the county executive and local legislators to no avail.

Who will enforce state rules and a common sense of decency for women and men in the jail?

What happened to the County Auditor?

It isn’t the county, which says it is fully aware of state regulations.  State regulations require regular audits of the jail.  And year after recent year the Broome County Department of Audit and Control, headed by Comptroller Alex J. McLaughlin and the Chairman of the Legislature, has dutifully fulfilled this responsibility to ascertain, in their own words, “whether commissary funds are being used and accounted for properly in accordance with State Corrections Law.” The findings?  “Based on the results of our examination, it is our opinion that the Sheriff’s Office is in compliance with State Law regarding the commissary fund.”  Is there something missing in the jail records and accounts that might sustain such a conclusion?

Ask the County and the Attorney General

It is time to ask county and state authorities, including the New York State Office of the Attorney General which oversees jail operations, and the State Comptroller which oversees contracts, to investigate–and ensure the county and Sheriff follow state law, if not common standards of humane treatment for those suffering in the jail.  There are too many anomalies, too many accounting irregularities.  We need to know:

• Why are jail prices for commissary items so high, and profits so excessive?
• Why are profits not spent on “rehabilitation and welfare” as required by state law?
• Why does the jail not provide basic food and hygiene needs as required in state law?
• Why have not annual audits by the county not enforced state laws?
• Where does the money sent to inmate accounts go? How much is charged in unaccounted fees?
• What is the return on jail contracts for food, telephone, and commissary purchases—and why aren’t contracts posted on the county purchasing website like other contracts?

May 8, 2019

*******************

Note:  this post will be updated and corrected as as more information arrives, particularly regarding county contracts with private firms operating in the jail.  Updates at www.justtalk.blog from which this is reprinted.

Bill Martin

How can we best educate Broome county’s kids and protect them from harm?  The choices are tough for parents, teachers, and school principals. Do we spend thin funding on more teachers or nurses?  Or a guidance or a mental health counselor? Or when it comes to safety, hardening the schools against armed attack and hiring armed police? Unfortunately fear, and not a rational calculation of where dangers lie, drives today’s calculations.

Fear is a powerful motivator.  In the Cold War years, children were drilled to “duck and cover” under their classroom desks to avoid the effects of Soviet atomic bombs.  Today students and teachers practice turning off lights, locking classroom doors, pulling down window shades, and huddling quietly in closets to hide from active shooters. Surprise lockdown drills have become the norm, reproducing a climate of insecurity and anxiety. One in three parents nationwide fear for the safety of their child at school, fed by lurid media coverage and politically calculated calls for more state security.

Living in fear imposes costs and choices.  Most prominent is the cost of police in our schools. In Broome County, as across the nation, the number of armed School Resource Officers (SROs) and civilian security staff has grown steadily.  What does this cost?  And has this reduced, prevented, or increased harm to our youth?

There is neither transparency nor much discussion here. School, city, and police budgets provide little help.  Incomplete responses to freedom of information requests to local towns, police departments, and the county, in addition to a survey of press and website listings, produce an incomplete total for Broome County schools of $1.3 million per year.  It looks like this:

These are very incomplete figures, given that SRO costs remain hidden in many budgets, and even these tabulations do not include in most cases civilian security staff, costs of “hardening” school facilities, staff training, consultant fees, drill practices, etc.

For many of our elected representatives this is not nearly enough. State legislators, led by our Senator (and former Undersheriff and current police officer) Frederick Akshar, have long advocated putting armed officers in schools. Senate Bill S1330 cosponsored by Akshar proposes that the state directly fund a force of retired police officers in all public and private schools outside of New York City—while raising school security officer (SRO) pay over 60 per cent.

The cost? Close to $200 million a year.

As an employment program, adding 4,000 part-time retirees to the state payroll is impressive. Nationwide, we’ve seen billions now spent on policing and hardening schools. Yet glaringly absent are other resources:   14 million students go to a school with a police officer but no counselor, nurse, psychologist or social worker.

Even more critical is the simple fact that adding armed police to school hallways does little to protect youth from the dangers they may face.  As multiple reports by security firms,[1]  research scholars,[2] and the Congressional Research Service[3] tell us, deaths in schools from active shooters are a minuscule subset of school fatalities, less than 5 percent,[4] and an even smaller percentage of youth homicides or suicides by firearms.[5]  Shootings in and around schools are also exceedingly rare. Students know this: their fear of attack or harm while in school has been falling for over two decades.[6] Students in schools do face harm but from sources armed police can do little to prevent or resolve:  transport accidents, suicide, bullying, and hate crimes among other causes.

Indeed armed police may exacerbate these problems. They certainly increase the danger of kids ending up in what is commonly called the school-to-prison pipeline. For what we do know is that more policing in our schools is associated with more detention and arrests, particularly of African-American and Latinx students.  Incidents previously addressed by teachers, principals, and parents are increasingly turned over to retired police officers, who by training rely upon force and the criminal justice system.  Recent protests against Binghamton High School security staff beating down a Black student on Court street, and the strip searching of four young Black girls at East Middle School highlight the problem and the fear some students have of the police and security staff.

Indeed, as local statistics and national surveys indicate, policing in schools reinforces racial disparities, with racially dipropionate rates of detention and arrest feeding directly into the prison pipeline.  African-Americans, for example, compose 10 percent of Broome County’s students, but account for 43% of juvenile detentions and 50% of those on probation supervision. Where are the precursors?  In the Binghamton School District, which spends the most on armed and private security, African-American students are suspended at 2.5 times the rate for white students and suffer a 26% drop out rate.  County-wide, African-American are 10 percent of youth but 43% of juvenile detentions and 50% of those on probation supervision.

It is simply too costly a system: too many police in schools, too many poor, disabled and students of color channeled into the criminal justice system, and too few counselors, nurses, and mental health workers in our schools to really help kids resolve the conflicts and troubles of growing up in these difficult times.

Twenty years ago DARE, the police program in schools to prevent drug use, was shown to be a total failure and it collapsed.  We should do the same to its successors, and end, finally, unaccountable mass policing in our schools

May 4, 2019

Notes

A shorter version of this post appeared as an op-ed in the Press & Sun Bulletin, May 4

[1] Stephen C. Satterly Jr., “Report of Relative Risks of Death in U.S. K-‐12 Schools” (Safe Havens International, August 1, 2014).

[2] James H. Price and Jagdish Khubchandani, “School Firearm Violence Prevention Practices and Policies: Functional or Folly?,” Violence and Gender, March 19, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1089/vio.2018.0044.

[3] Authors Redacted, “School Resource Officers: Issues for Congress” (Congressional Research Service, July 5, 2018).

[4] Authors Redacted, 18.

[5] Price and Khubchandani, “School Firearm Violence Prevention Practices and Policies,” 2.

[6] Lauren Musu-Gillette et al., “Indicators of SChool Crime and Safety 2017” (Washington, D.C: U.S. Department of Education, U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics, March 2018), 105.

Arnold on Grievances at the Jail