Good afternoon, Chairwoman Brooks-Powers and members of this committee. My name is Benny Boscio Jr. I am the President of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, the second-largest law enforcement union in the City of New York. Our members, as you know, provide care, custody, and control of
approximately 6,800 inmates daily.
New York City Correction Officers are essential first responders. 85% of our members are Black and Hispanic and approximately 50% of our officers are female. In short, we are the most diverse uniformed force in the City of New York.
Our number one mission is to ensure the jails are safe for everyone, while ensuring the people in our custody receive all the services and programming they are entitled to and they are safely escorted to and from their medical appointments and their court appointments.
As far as programing is concerned, the Department literally provides dozens and dozens of programs to people in our custody and each of our facilities also provides their own programs that include, re-entry support to assist people in
custody re-enter their communities, support for single mothers, support for LGBTQ individuals, mentoring programs for young people, programs to reduce recidivism, programs for veterans, programs that provide canine therapy to help inmates manage stress, anxiety and depression, faith based programs and programs to help people with alcohol and drug addictions.
(COBA President Benny Boscio speaks at NYC City Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice)
These are just a few examples of the 20-30 programs provided to the thousands of people in our custody and not even one of these programs can operate without enough correction officers to provide safety and security, with most programs requiring anywhere between two to four correction officers at any given time and sometimes more.
And this does not include the many services we provide, which are consistent with the department’s minimum standards. This also does not include unexpected incidents where inmates require security escorts to the hospital due to illness or
injury. During these situations, correction officers are pulled away from housing areas to provide these security escorts.
While our members provide these essential services, we’re dealing with the challenges of a very dangerous environment that comes with supervising a population where 70% of the people in custody are facing violent felony charges.
Last year there were over 660 assaults on Correction Officers, committed by people in our custody, including 25 sexual assaults on our female officers, over 170 spitting incidents, over 260 splashing incidents, over 150 slashing incidents, over
120 stabbing incidents and over 500 pieces of weapons and drugs recovered by our officers. In fact, we recover weapons and drugs in our facilities daily.
In the first three months of this year, we have already seen over 140 assaults on correction officers. In fact, within just this past week, a female correction officer was slashed just below her eye by an inmate.
In addition to these violent conditions, we are still suffering from a severe staffing crisis. Our workforce is down approximately 40% from 2020. We have approximately 5,000 officers working across three tours of duty, who are
supervising housing areas where there is literally one officer to 50 inmates, many of whom are affiliated with a violent gang.
Safe staffing levels matter. Whether it is properly supervised housing areas, providing an emergency response team when violent incidents occur, preventing suicides, transporting inmates to and from the hospital or to and from their court
appearances, supervising inmate visits and inmate programs, all roads to a safe and secure jail system begin with sufficient staffing levels.
COBA is currently lobbying our state legislators and Governor Hochul to restore our 20 Year Retirement Benefit, which would go a long way towards bolstering our staffing levels by incentivizing people to take this job and remain in this job.
New York City Firefighters and Police Officers have all recently received this restoration to their pension benefits, but not us.
I respectfully ask this committee and your colleagues in the City Council to lend your support by writing or calling the Governor’s Office and asking her to support our collective mission to create safe staffing levels by including this legislation in the state budget.
The city’s budget reflects the priorities of the mayor, yourselves, and your colleagues on the City Council. This committee must prioritize the safety and security of my members if you’re truly serious about enhancing the safety of everyone in our jails. It’s not the location of a jail that matters; it’s the policies that
operate a jail that matter.
It’s outrageous that the city has allocated billions of dollars in the capital budget to fund new borough jails that are nowhere close to being completed, while ignoring the deteriorating conditions in our current jails. Investing in making much needed
improvements in our current jails and providing funding for the new jails shouldn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
These new investments in our current jails must include:
- Immediately updating and replacing all inoperable cell doors to keep officers and inmates safe from violent offenders. Many assaults take place because the people in our custody can pop in and out of their cells, just
using an instrument as simple as a fork.
- Allocating significant funding for sanitary and modern showers and locker rooms for our officers, some of which are facing deplorable conditions, where rats and insects run rampant.
- Allocating funding for refresher classes in suicide prevention, fire prevention and training for Narcan to resuscitate people who overdose.
- Allocating funding for safety equipment.
All these budgetary requests are long-overdue and go a long way towards making our jails safer.
We are prepared to work productively with each of you, DOC Commissioner Richards, the mayor, and the new Remediation Manager, if you are willing to listen to our concerns and take the necessary actions to improve the working conditions of my members, so that together, we can make our jails safer for
everyone.