Virus fuels tense time at jail
Backup called after outbreak reduces guard staffing
Fulton County Sheriff Richard Giardino was forced to call in deputies and state troopers to quell a disturbance among prison-bound inmates in the locked-down jail after an outbreak of COVID-19 left many of the guards sidelined.
For about 15 minutes Saturday, seven troopers and road patrol deputies worked in the Fulton County jail, which has been in lockdown for about two weeks because of the outbreak.
Lockdown requires that prisoners remain in cells for all but four hours a day, so inmates are not getting as much recreation as they want and their movement is restricted.
The sheriff says less than 50 percent of the guards have gotten the vaccine and he cannot legally require them to get shots. Many prisoners have also refused vaccinations, he added. Many employers contend they can’t require employee to be vaccinated against the coronavirus because the vaccines
are only approved for emergency use and not fully approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The tense situation Saturday night left the sheriff ’s office shortstaffed when faced with inmates in the maximum security unit who Giardino said were ignoring orders from correction officers.
Giardino noted that more officers couldn’t be sent into the unit while adequately staffing the rest of the jail.
After three road deputies and four troopers were brought in, the sheriff said, officers were able to “get everyone to comply with the directives and go into their cell.” No one was injured, he said.
The unit is used to house inmates before they are transferred to state prison. The Daily Gazette reported the incident Monday.
Melanie Trimble, chapter director of the Capital Region chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said inmates are a “vulnerable population.”
She said like nursing homes, the state should have made correctional facilities a priority when it came to offering vaccinations to people in restricted living arrangements.
Trimble said when that didn’t happen the NYCLU tried talking to district attorneys, jail supervisors and sheriffs across the state about releasing people who would not be a danger to the community. The NYCLU is also considering possible legal action.
“We’re not surprised that Fulton has gone the same way that a lot of other jails do where they’ve just locked prisoners down and do nothing to abate the situation, and when you have corrections officers that are unwilling to get vaccinated, they really ought to consider alternatives to having officers in there possibly spreading the disease to inmates who have no control over their freedom,” she added.
“Just because we’re so short-staffed, we didn’t want to risk our officers or the inmates getting injured, and by bringing in road patrol and the troopers, it was a force multiplier, and it actually deterred it getting out of control,” Giardino said Monday.
He described the move Saturday night as a precaution at a small jail where about 30 percent of the correction officers are either out because they contracted COVID-19, or are in quarantine because they were in contact with someone who had the deadly virus.
Giardino said during the first few days of the outbreak that they were able to isolate the virus to one unit but that became impossible to contain as the cases mounted.
“We were not able to ascertain where it came from, whether it was from our inmates, from boarders from other counties, or from staff,” he said, adding the inmates from Saturday’s incident will face disciplinary action.
In late December, the Schenectady County Jail went into lockdown after four correction officers and two inmates tested positive for coronavirus.
Schenectady County Sheriff Dominic Dagostino said Monday that the majority of the approximately 148 jail guards opted to get the COVID vaccine.
There are 167 inmates housed there.
Trimble also asserted that the passage in New York of bail reform laws were a “life saver” for some people.
In 2019, the sweeping reforms allowed judges to set bail for more criminal charges than originally allowed and mostly did away with cash bail for many people awaiting trial.
“For people who were critical of bail reform, they should now understand that innocent people, people that have been falsely accused, would be facing exposure to a very dangerous situation if they were to go jail when they haven’t been convicted of anything yet or because they cannot afford to raise the bail that’s necessary,” Trimble said.