ALBANY — A Greene Correctional Facility corrections officer recounted her harrowing story of a 2020 assault that she experienced from a prisoner during a New York State Senate hearing on Thursday.
The joint public hearing on the impact of sexual assault in the prison system was led by state Sen. Julia Salazar, D-Brooklyn, who chairs the Senate Standing Committee on Crime Victims, Crime and Correction and state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, D-Bronx, who chairs the Senate Standing Committee on Ethics and Internal Governance.
The Greene correction officer appeared on camera to testify during the virtual hearing, but Salazar said her identity would not be revealed.
“An officer who has requested, and we’re honoring this request, to testify anonymously,” Salazar said of the witness.
The witness was identified at the virtual meeting as an Impacted Correction Officer as she told her story of an assault that took place at the Coxsackie state prison on June 5, 2020. Columbia-Greene Media does not identify victims of sexual abuse or assault.
“I was assaulted physically and almost sexually assaulted,” she testified.
The officer then showed the panel a photo of her bruised face and thighs in the aftermath of the attack as she lay in a hospital bed at Albany Medical Center.
“The inmate kicked me and cut me,” she said. “This is what I live with every day, senators. Mentally I was not able to go back to work for 11 months. Mentally I was not able to be in a dorm around other incarcerated individuals. I could not mentally do it. I was very suicidal. I had to take some sort of cocktail because there was so much blood exposure that anything that was a potential disease from other inmates, I had to take that for two months. I was not able to eat, I was nauseous. I was going to the bathroom on myself.”
In response to a question from Biaggi about preemptive measures could have been taken to ward off the attack, the officer said the staffing numbers among the officers was a major problem.
“Staffing has become an issue for us,” she said. “We are severely understaffed. I do believe that if another officer was placed with me, when you’re in a dorm with 40 to 50 male incarcerated individuals, and it’s one officer to 40 to 50, it’s a problem.”
The officer said that when she was attacked by the inmates she was in dire need of assistance.
“I was dragged into a room and my body-worn camera that sits on my shirt, that individual ripped my shirt open to throw it out of the room,” she said. “He then took my only radio assistance. All of my equipment that was supposed to help me, if there was another officer there, even if I was being attacked, if that officer was able to call for help, it would have helped a lot.”
The officer said other inmates stepped in to stop the attack.
“The incarcerated individuals that were in my dorm, thank God I was fair to them, they actually came to my defense,” she said. “But that is not their job to come to my defense. It is up to my sisters and brothers in blue to come to my defense. Unfortunately I wasn’t given that opportunity.”
The Department of Corrections and Community Supervisor detailed the staffing numbers in the state prison system.
“As of December 2021, the Department had 1.8 incarcerated individuals for every staff member,” DOCCS said in a statement on Friday. “This ratio of 1.8:1 falls well below the national average in state facilities at approximately 4:1 and in federal prisons at 9:1, as of Nov. 1, 2018, which is the most recently available national data.”
DOCCS also said that as of Feb. 25, there were two incarcerated individuals for every one security staff member at Greene Correctional Facility.
“While the Department’s staffing ratios are some of the best in the nation, the COVID-19 pandemic has, at times, caused a strain on staffing levels throughout the past two years,” DOCCS said. “Emergency control plans are in place at each facility, which includes provisions uniquely designed to meet that facility’s needs, to deal with significant staff absences.”
The officer who testified was named as a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit filed in May 2021 in U.S. District Court in Albany by the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association against the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and DOCCS Acting Commissioner Anthony Annucci over the Humane Alternatives to Long-Term Solitary Confinement Act.
The HALT Act, which was signed by Cuomo last spring, bans prisons from holding inmates in solitary confinement for more than 15 consecutive days.
The officer told senators during the hearing that the legislation does not provide enough of a deterrent for inmates to not attack staff members in prison.
“When does the state stand up for us?” she said. “We’re coming to work every day to protect the state of New York. When do the bills come that protect us? That when an incarcerated individual decides to physically or sexually assault one of us, when do they say, ‘This is going to happen now because this happened to one of our staff members.’ We feel that we as corrections officers have been left behind.”
The panel heard from 15 witnesses during the hearing, including sexual assault victims and advocacy groups, and Salazar said the committee would continue to receive written testimony from additional witnesses.
At the beginning of the six-hour hearing, Biaggi praised the sexual assault survivors who shared their stories with the panel.
“All of your testimonies will allow us to develop better policies and to make sure we prevent future harms,” she said. “We’re here to examine the pervasive problem of sexual assault in correction facilities in the state of New York.”
Salazar has co-sponsored Senate bill S2175, which is in committee.
The bill would create the Office of the Correctional Ombudsman to achieve transparency, fairness, impartiality and accountability in New York state correctional facilities.