MALONE — People incarcerated in the Bare Hill Correctional Facility say they’ve been locked up in their dorms for days, given intermittent medical care, and said some were beaten by corrections officers before they left the facilities to protest last Wednesday.
Reached by phone at the correctional facility Monday, three men incarcerated at Bare Hill said they’ve been locked in their dorms since Thursday, the day COs walked out of the facility and left the dorms unsupervised.
“They abandoned us, left us in here to fend for ourselves, no food, violence is going on, it’s terrible,” said Andre Goldsmith, a 35-year-old from Erie County being held at the medium-security prison.
He said the National Guard came in about 12 hours after the COs left Thursday morning, leaving the incarcerated people locked inside without food, medical attention, or protection for 12 hours. Diabetics went without insulin, instances of inmate-on-inmate violence weren’t broken up, and it took nearly 12 hours for replacement National Guard soldiers to deliver sack lunches to the hundreds of people held in the dormitory-style facility.
Goldsmith said that the National Guard soldiers have been overwhelmed by the responsibilities. COs are given months of training before being assigned to their first prison post, where they learn on the job for at least weeks more. The National Guard soldiers came in with a few days’ notice and nearly no training.
“They’ve been very, very nice,” he said. “I have never been treated like this while being incarcerated. They’re trying to do all they can without even having knowledge of how to be a correction officer.”
RELEASE DATES
Shaun Williams, a 54-year-old from Nassau County in custody at Bare Hill, said people with medical conditions were receiving only sporadic medical care and went without necessary medicine for all of Thursday.
Releases have been interrupted as well.
“There’s guys in here with release dates, they’re not releasing them yet,” he said. “They’re telling us they’re gonna get to us.”
Williams has a conditional release date set for March 17 at the earliest, and Goldsmith has an earliest release date of March 27. Both men said they were concerned about potentially missing their release date, and Goldsmith also expressed concerns that authorities could retaliate against him for speaking to the media. Speaking through the prison phone, his call was recorded by prison officials.
Ontario R. Eldridge, a 39-year-old from Chautauqua County being held at Bare Hill, said that incarcerated people aren’t being allowed to go to the prison’s law library, where the prison grievance paperwork is kept. Filling out a grievance form is one way prisoners can keep track of incidents and document them for potential legal action, and Eldridge said he was concerned he and fellow incarcerated people wouldn’t be able to document the incidents as they occurred.
CULTURE OF VIOLENCE
Eldridge maintained that there’s a culture of violence within the state prison system, where COs regularly beat incarcerated people needlessly and fellow officers protect their colleagues at the expense of the inmates—a regular assessment given by incarcerated people and advocates for them that’s generally refuted by COs and state authorities.
“We feel safer with the National Guard here than with the actual correction officers,” he said.
Eldridge said that he had witnessed an act of violent protest from the COs before they left the dormitories unguarded on Thursday—he said that they’d beaten some men with broomsticks.
“They hit some inmates with broomsticks, and told them ‘tell Kathy Hochul to come save you’ before they locked the door and left,” he said. “It was a violent protest.”
Eldridge said he had witnessed the beatings himself. Goldsmith said he had also seen the beatings occur.
Spokespeople for the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision did not return a request for comment when asked if they had any evidence of such a situation.
SAY BEATEN, THEN IGNORED
Eldridge said the mix of being beaten, then ignored for over a day and locked in a dormitory space for days without being allowed out, has ground down all people incarcerated at Bare Hill.
“There’s no one here to have a voice for the inmates that’s in here,” he said. “We’ve committed crimes, and we’re paying for them, but we’re not the lowest of the earth, we’re still human beings. They’re taking away our humanity, it makes us feel less than men, less than we are.”
Conditions continued as they have since Wednesday through Monday. Union representatives, DOCCS officials, and a state-appointed mediator started emergency negotiations meant to bridge the divide and bring more protesting COs back to work, while about 5,000 National Guard soldiers continued to staff the prisons in need.
It’s not immediately clear how many COs are protesting, but all but five of the 42 active prisons in New York are involved in some capacity.
The state began implementing penalties against striking COs over the weekend as well—implementing a fine of double the day’s wages for every shift missed, dropping state support for health insurance for officers who are striking, and filing charges against striking COs for violating a temporary restraining order handed down by a state court last week.