Union: Junk juvie
Jailers want Raise the Age lockup closed down
The head of the city’s Department of Correction union is demanding an end to the state’s Raise the Age experiment at the Horizon Juvenile Center — before one of his officers gets hurt or killed.
“It appears that almost everyone is prepared to sacrifice the life of correction officers for this social experiment,” Correction Officers Benevolent Association President Elias Husamudeen said Thursday. “This is looking a lot like the South during the ’60s, when the state and local government officials refused to get involved to protect the rights of all of its citizens.”
“The city is on notice that it must take action today to make Horizon a safe workplace before a correction officer loses his or her life, or Horizon must be shut down,” Husamudeen said.
The union head’s pleas come a day after roughly 20 officers suffered injuries stopping a brawl between two groups of inmates at the Bronx juvenile facility, where 16- and 17-yearold criminal offenders were moved after being taken out of Rikers to comply with the state’s Raise the Age law.
After the brawl, another officer suffered a serious head injury when an inmate struck him with his radio, officials said. The officer had to spend the night in the hospital.
Video of another fight inside the Bronx facility shows officers wrestling two inmates to the ground.
Husamudeen said that in the last three days “up to 25 correction officers assigned to the ACS Horizon Juvenile Facility have been assaulted and injured.”
“Correction officers are resigning from the agency rather than face the danger at Horizon,” he said. “Why are the lives and careers of correction officers being marginalized and discounted by these city and state officials?”
About 100 correction officers have been assigned to the Horizon Juvenile Center to guard the juvenile offenders with officials from the city’s Administration for Children’s Services. A good portion of the officers volunteered for the assignment, authorities said.
The officers could be working at Horizon for the next several months — possibly a year — as ACS begins to take over protection of the teens.
The jailers union has repeatedly opposed the plan to put its officers at Horizon, claiming that its employees are not trained to handle juveniles and are not allowed to use pepper spray as a deterrent, as they would on Rikers Island.
An ACS spokeswoman has said that all of the incidents at Horizon have been quickly addressed and none of the injuries sustained by inmates or correction officers were serious.
“We are in a transitionary period for a historic reform that’s never been done before and there have been some incidents involving youth and officers which were quickly addressed,” the spokeswoman said Wednesday. “We take these and all incidents seriously.”