Why New York Prison Guards Can Get Away With Almost AnythingBy Carey Wedler The states correctional department has been marred not only by incompetence, but sadistic beat up squads of officers who brutalize inmates and others who commit sexual assault and rape. According to a new report by the New York Times and the non-profit Marshall Project, the internal investigation unit of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervisionhas expressed its commitment to curtailing these ongoing abuses but it faces one major obstacle: the New York State Correctional Officers Police Benevolent Association, which has dominated New York politicians and policy for years. Though the national conversation on mass incarceration and mistreatment in prisons has rightly focused on corrupt ties between lawmakers and the private prison lobby, the prison guard union in New York wields an impressive amount of power. The Times reported: The union is a formidable political force, protected in the Legislature, primarily by upstate lawmakers in districts where prisons are the biggest employers. The chairman of the corrections committee in the State Senate, Patrick M. Gallivan, a Republican who represents an area outside Buffalo and Rochester, has five prisons in his district alone. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is also complicit in the increasingly apparent racket. Though he has overseen the Department of Corrections new attempt to rein in the union, his staff is closely connected to it. His chief of staff, Melissa DeRosa, worked in public relations for the union for several months in 2009 and is the daughter of Giorgio DeRosa, a major Albany lobbyist whose firm received $691,000 from the union between 2010 and 2015, according to state filings, the Times noted. The Cuomo administration also has played down the culpability of violent officers. Relationships like these have allowed the union to amass substantial control of what goes on inside correctional facilities. Thanks to the unions ongoing contract negotiations with a long line of governors, including Cuomo, the union retains power over personnel decisions, overriding prison superintendents and even the commissioner of the corrections department. Under the current contract, union seniority rules dictate that superintendents have practically no power to transfer problem officers, the Times reported. An arbitrator not the commissioner decides who gets fired. Officers enjoy a 24-hour grace period before being questioned about reported incidents, and they are also not required to answer questions from outside law enforcement agencies. Further, because of privacy protections enacted thanks to lobbying from police and corrections officers unions, disciplinary actions taken against guards are kept secret. The result is that a culture of brutality has been allowed to thrive in the prisons, where a few rogue guards, often known on the cellblocks as beat-up squads, administer vigilante justice, while fellow officers look the other way, the Times observed. The investigative unit currently has a caseload of suspected wrongdoing by officers totaling over 1,000 incidents. The Times noted several: Asked whether brutality was a problem, however, union president Michael B. Powers flatly said, What are you talking about? Due to years of ongoing abuses like these, Cuomo authorized the Department of Corrections internal investigations to add 34 new investigators, which expanded the team from 116 members to 150. The governors approval represents, arguably, a response to his own policies favoring the prison union, which have allowed misconduct to run rampant. Nevertheless, Stephen Maher, a former assistant state attorney general, was hired to fix the unit in order to deal with the state prison systems myriad shortcomings. The new leadership appears to be taking its duties seriously. Daniel F. Martuscello III, the departments deputy commissioner, has said, We will do anything necessary. Im not here to make the union happy. Maher fired 10 percent of investigators deemed unqualified and the unit has attempted to seize power from the union but not without pushback. In one instance, the Department of Corrections moved to fire an officer at Sing Sing prison, Lavar Thomas, who admitted he repeatedly punched an inmate for making a gurgling, hocking sound as if he was going to spit. Though incident was caught on video, the state arbitrator decided in favor of Thomas, who had a history of erratic behavior. In retaliation, corrections investigators stripped certification from another officer who testified on behalf of Thomas and referred the case to the Westchester County District Attorneys office, which filed criminal charges against the officer. However, the Times noted, under the [union labor] contract, an arbitrators decision is final and binding and a misdemeanor conviction is not grounds for automatic termination, which highlights the power of unions purchased influence on policy. Unsurprisingly, investigators hoping to combat the unions imbalanced control have run into other problems beyond rigid labor contracts. Guards can be slow to produce inmate witnesses from the cellblocks and will routinely confer, in efforts to get their stories straight, current and former department officials said, and investigators have been blocked from entering prisons. I once knew of an investigator who got his jaw broken by a C.O. from Clinton, said Patrick Dunleavy, a former deputy commissioner of the unit. But the unions resistance is not limited to thwarting the investigations unit, nor is it a recent development. A 26-year veteran of the corrections department, Barbara Kowaleski, spoke out in 2002 after witnessing another guard, Michael Rorick, abuse an inmate at Hale Creek Correctional Facility. She claimed she was repeatedly harassed and eventually fired, and a lawsuit ultimately recognized her status as a whistleblower. She was awarded $200,000. While Kowaleskis case was eventually resolved (as best the system could manage), one threat she received highlights the power dynamic the investigations seek to interrupt. In her lawsuit, Kowaleski alleged two union officials, Rorick and Donald Rowe led a campaign against her. At one point, the Times reported, when she was driving home from work, Mr. Rowe, who was then the union shop steward, drove up and forced her pickup truck off the road. Mr. Rowe was later elected president of the statewide union. The Times reports that according to state records, both men still work at the prison. The unions current president, Michael B. Powers, has dismissed recent criticisms of guard misconduct and brutality: Were the best at what we dobest in the nation. This article (Why New York Prison Guards Can Get Away with Almost Anything) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Carey Wedler and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11 pm Eastern/8 pm Pacific. Image credit: Busterrr. If you spot a typo, please email the error and name of the article at edits@theantimedia.org. Take a good look.This is whats gonna happen to everyone in the USA inside outside /closed or open air prison..time to wake up from the entrained cognitive dissonance of the alpha-wave idiot box I think NYSDOCS and NYSCOBA do a good job These people are not in jail for being innocent. Its like being in the projects. The Police are out numbered 20 to 1. Step to the plate if you wish and can do much better. Or just complain about the system. Go behind the walls and drink that poison. You must be one of the guards or in some prison. Knocking and 81 year old blind and partially deaf man unconscious is OK??? Not hardly and brutality is not the answer either! True these guys are far from saints but at least treat them like a human being! 