Nassau County jail faces shortage of C.O.s

The Nassau County Correctional Center is facing a correctional-officer shortage that officials are calling a risk to staff and inmates.

The jail came under scrutiny for being short on officers at a Nassau County budget hearing on Oct. 12, at which Sheriff Vera Fludd said that her capital plan is contingent on her ability to hire new recruits and avoid rising overtime costs.

The jail recently graduated a class of 25 new corrections officers. But 36 officers have retired so far this year, and the facility is operating with 200 fewer officers than in 2012. “Not many people want this job,” Fludd said. “That’s just the truth of the matter.”

According to Fludd, a list of interested candidates that the county Civil Service Commission gave her was outdated, and many prospective recruits may have found work elsewhere.

“Morale is low, from what I see and what I hear, and it’s impacting the quality of life of our employees,” said County Legislator William Gaylor, a Republican from Lynbrook, describing officers who regularly work overtime in a jail that is in constant need of repairs and infrastructure improvements.

Brian Sullivan, president of the county’s Correctional Officers Benevolent Association, first criticized the jail for its decline in recruitment after a violent confrontation between inmates and officers on July 9. Officers were preparing to transfer a member of the Bloods gang to another housing unit when the inmate punched an officer in the face and several nearby inmates got involved, leaving 10 officers injured.

“I don’t see a hell of a lot of action going on,” Sullivan said, calling the jail a “shell of its former self, and in dire need of attention.” He criticized the county and the Civil Service Commission for not doing more to increase recruitment, and warned Fludd not to follow the example of her predecessor, Michael Sposato.

“Fludd can’t be given Sposato’s playbook and expect to change anything,” Sullivan said. “It’s riddled with mismanagement that left the jail with a demoralized department, crumbling infrastructure and 13 dead inmates over a six-year period.” Fludd was working under Sposato in 2016 when Democratic legislators called on him to resign after a string of inmate deaths and lawsuits.

The Legislature’s minority leader, Kevan Abrahams, a Democrat from Hempstead, called on Fludd to appear at a separate hearing on the jail’s issues. Despite the decline in recruitment, she has enacted a series of new programs over the course of her 10-month tenure.

The current recruitment class was the first to be trained in mental health and first aid. The jail is expanding its drug and alcohol rehabilitation program, and introducing Medicaid enrollment and discharge-planning programs to help inmates plan their post-incarceration lives.