Twice as Bold
Mom, 47; daughter, 22, join Correction Dept.
A MOTHER and daughter became members of the city’s Department of Correction on Friday — joining a trio of relatives who are already part of the Boldest family.
Mildred Santiago, 47, and Jamie Rosario, 22, of Long Island, were among the 592 graduates welcomed to the agency at a graduation ceremony at Lehman College in the Bronx.
“It’s a family thing,” Santiago said.
Her brother and nephew work at Rikers Island and her husband is a retired officer, she explained.
“It was not a tough decision to make,” she said. Her daughter agreed. “Who wouldn’t want to be one of New York’s Boldest?” Rosario chimed in.
In this case, it was the daughter who led the mother, Santiago admitted.
“She was going to do it so I joined in,” she said.
The Suffolk County women said they felt confident they could do the job after successfully completing a 16-week training program.
“I learned a lot . . . for every challenge you undergo somebody is there to back you up,” said Rosario, who, like her mom, is from Coram.
Meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio used the graduation to tout a reduction in serious assaults on Rikers Island staff.
Serious assaults against officers have dropped 11% this year, the mayor said. And use-of-force injuries dropped 17%, he added.
“We know the challenges of this job, and this is why we are deploying every tool we have,” the mayor said. “For too long, Rikers was an unsafe island for both officers and inmates.”
The number of stabbings and slashings on Rikers — inmates attacking inmates — is still on the rise.
The Department of Correction will add an additional 1,800 officers over the next year.
Commissioner Joseph Ponte credited the $200 million investment from the city for the reduction in assaults against officers. The money went for new staff, equipment, training and technology. In 2012 the Department of Justice issued a damning report, saying it found evidence of “a deep seated culture of violence” at Rikers.
Ponte said he addressed the findings when he took over in
April 2014.
“We put (a) 14-point plan in motion and made significant progress,” he said.
But Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, criticized the city’s anti-violence agenda as dangerous to his members.
“My job is to keep you safe by any means necessary,” Seabrook told the graduates.
“I don’t want you to use excessive force . . . I don’t want you to go to work and treat people in the way that they try to treat you,” he said.
“I want you to treat them better because they are human beings,” the union boss continued, after pointing out an officer who had been slashed in the face by an inmate.
“I don’t care so much about the 14-point plan except No. 1 on the plan, your safety,” Seabrook said, to roaring applause.