Dear Governor Hochul,
This is my husband Charlie. He has served as a New York Corrections Officer for more than two decades.
If you don’t know what that means, ask a CO or do some homework.
Charlie has performed CPR on inmates, and saved an inmate’s life when he attempted to hang himself (it’s a lot harder than you think to get your finger or scissors between someone’s neck and gauze while they are hanging themselves), he has responded when an inmate boiled cooking oil in an electric kettle and used it as a weapon against another inmate’s face, he’s responded to countless assaults on staff and so many things that are simply too graphic and terrible to include.
Charlie is the first person to jump up when someone needs help and he is the Dad that’s always in the pool playing with the kids. He loves God, his family and football.
He’s a real, living, breathing person with a life outside of work and people that depend on him. Even though he’s just a badge number to you, when he doesn’t come home from work people miss him, and promises and commitments get broken.
Governor, stop trying to control the narrative and tell the truth.
The facts are: inmate-to-inmate assaults have increased, assaults on staff have increased, drug use, weapons possession and gang activity has increased. Correction Officers are resigning and retiring en masse because they can no longer work in this volatile environment.
Why are you vilifying the men and women of the Department of Corrections? Why aren’t you being transparent about the number of incidents involving violent inmates? Why didn’t you tell the media that three correction officers were held hostage by inmates last week?
Why haven’t you released any CCTV or body camera footage of assaults on staff? Again, I can’t come up with any reason other than it doesn’t bolster your political agenda.
Your response to the strike or non-response as it were, has made me lose complete faith in you as a leader. Instead of uniting New Yorkers and facing critical issues head-on, you doubled down on the politics and made threats to try to force CO’s to return to unbearable working conditions.
Sincerely,
Christina Phillips, Wife of NYS Corrections Officer Charlie