Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - While a lockdown of the Collins Correctional Facility in the Town of Collins was still ongoing, as of Friday afternoon, WBEN is beginning to learn about how that lockdown was triggered from the union representing corrections officers in New York.
Kenny Gold, regional vice president for the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association (NYSCOPBA), says at around 1 a.m. Wednesday morning is when the incident began with corrections officers at the facility attempting to retrieve contraband of an inmate, who was found to have a cell phone.
"When they're in the bathroom, using force, trying to get the situation under control, there were a plethora - I can't tell you the exact amount of inmates - but there were inmates right in the bathroom, standing [in] line with each other, on top of the members that were there trying to get the situation under control with the inmates that they had to use force on," said Gold during an appearance Friday with Tom Bauerle on WBEN.
That initial incident in the bathroom injured three members of the corrections staff on hand that morning, though the Department of Corrections commissioner, Daniel Martuscello III, has said only one corrections officer was injured.
Then at around 6 a.m. when staff at the correctional facility did standing counts, Gold was told that was when the staff reached out to their supervisor, and they were told to leave the unit.
"At some point after the count, and inmate comes out, he brandishes some sort of pick weapon or ice pick, the words that have been used for me, and then a bunch of inmates gathered around this specific inmate," Gold described.
As Gold laid out, there four total units with an upstairs and downstairs and dorms on each side of the unit. The one unit saw corrections officers leaving that area, locking themselves out so the inmates were alone.
"It was ordered because of the gravity of the situation," Gold noted. "The other dorm starts having problems, they get out. Upstairs, you have two other dorms that have issues going on as well. So at some point up in those dorms, it's a little different from the downstairs one, but there's like a middle area, we call it a crossover, an area where officers go. It's a fridge that they have in there to put their drinks for their day or their food, and the officers on each side of those units ended up in that area, locked the door."
Gold estimates those members of the correctional staff were in that middle area for about 3-to-4 hours, and as soon as they went in that area, the inmates covered the windows so no one could see what was going on.
According to Gold, staff at the Collins Correctional Facility are disheartened by the way that Commissioner Martuscello has, at times, downplayed the situation, especially given the conditions corrections officers across the state are dealing with on a daily basis.
"With everything else going on, when we talk about our boss, it sounds like, from what I understand, he's recognized that the staff on the midnight shift, when it happened it went well, at least from what's been told to me from supervisors and so on, so forth when he was down there. But they need to have somebody there to acknowledge that they're doing the right thing, instead of making it look like they're brushing a rug, making it seem like it wasn't a big deal. To them, that was life or death. And that's what's disheartening. That's what's heartbreaking," he said.
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