Collins, N.Y. (WBEN) - Frustration over a lack of prison guards is at an all time high after a situation at Collins Correctional Facility led to a lockdown on Wednesday.
Vice president of the Western Region for NYSCOPBA, Kenny Gold says this is a result of being ignored by lawmakers for years.
"On all levels, from the governor on down, nobody is listening to what could happen. No one's listening to the frontline men and women that work the job every day, the ones that they mandate for 24 hours and don't get home to get to see their families. They're forgetting about all that. But as we've been screaming at the rooftop, saying that we need help and we need somebody to listen pounds right now is can point everything directly towards every conversation that we've had with the media, we've had with the governor's office, we've had with the commissioner, and it's, it's getting 10 times worse. I don't want to say 10 times. A million times worse," stated Gold.
Gold says many of these officers end up work 16-24 hour shifts because there is a clear lack of resources and people to do the job.
"There is no dollar amount at this point that can stop what is going on inside these prisons. They point to the commissioner himself, points towards the union. Our governing body, the executive assembly for our union, unanimously voted on a vote of no confidence against the commissioner of corrections. We've demanded a meeting with the governor to have to sit down and say this is what's really going on, because nobody's listening. But when you do that point of saying no confidence. There's no dollar amount. There's nothing that they can do," explained Gold.
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One CO that recently retired says his job used to be respectable but everything went downhill after Governor Kathy Hochul passed the HALT legislation.
"We all knew it was coming. They they tried to let us manage it a little bit. I mean, we've got good people at the facility. We had good bosses, we had good supervision, but there's just no way. They just mandated everybody wear a body cam. And we went to training and they told everybody, it only works when you deactivate it. Now we find out it's done 24 hours, so if you go to the bathroom, they can see you."
"They say solitary confinement makes them crazy. Guess what? They were crazy before they got incarcerated. They really were," stated the retired CO. "They cut the Feds off the walls. They put four stainless steel desks on each company for the inmates to color on. They took our area where we used to sit and have a break room, that put two classes in there. They went down the basement. They put classrooms there. These are all these things that make these people better, but they're sociopaths. There's no negotiating with them when they're going crazy, you know?"