By Nick Buglione
The Lynbrook resident has been assaulted, seen other officers beaten, and broken up vicious fights. He has the dubious distinction of knowing what it's like to have inmates throw urine and feces at him somewhat regularly, as do many of his co-workers. Still, up until now, he's taken it all in stride.
Yet, according to Sullivan and many other correction officers working at the jail, things are really starting to get bad in there.
Citing increased gang activity, snail-slow arrest procedures and the lack of a disciplinary housing unit to separate the more disruptive inmates from the general population, these officers fear they are losing control of the more than 1,800 prisoners in the Nassau County jail.
Their boss, Sheriff Ed Reilly, begs to differ. He resoundingly affirmed to the Herald that it's business as usual inside the jail, and has characterized the heightened attention toward its conditions as a union stunt by Sheriff Officers Association President Michael Adams, who is up for re-election.
Taking over
"You walk in here, you're walking into an alternate universe," said Sullivan, a corporal who is married and has a 13-year-old son. "My wife can tell when I come home, by the look on my face, when to talk to me or when to leave me alone for a little while before telling me what my son did in school."
While correction officers claim that the jail's population has become more volatile over time, the situation first caught the public's attention last month, when squabbling inmates started four separate fires in Cell Block B, Tier 3.
While inmates were in their cells, they ignited toilet paper and set fire to any combustibles they could get their hands on, including mattress stuffing, milk cartons, cereal boxes, clothing and sheets. Seven were arrested for starting the fires, all of whom, authorities said, were members of various gangs.
"That's dangerous stuff," said Brian Holt, a corporal who has worked in the jail for 15 years and also volunteers as a fireman in his hometown. "You're talking about starting a fire in a place where there are a lot of combustibles, where it will create a lot of smoke and all these inmates have no egress."
Incidents such as these can be avoided, however, if the jail were to carefully monitor inmates connected with gangs and house them accordingly, correction officers said.
"Let's face the facts: the Nassau County Correctional Facility has a gang problem," said Adams, president of the Sheriff Officers Association, the union that represents over 1,000 correction officers. "The assertion that this is a political stunt is ridiculous."
In recent years, the number of inmates belonging to the Bloods, Crips, and especially Latino gangs like the Latin Kings and MS-13, a.k.a. Mara Salvatrucha, has soared, Adams said.
"Several years ago, it was a lot safer for officers and inmates alike," Holt said. "A lot has changed; there's a lot of gang activity that goes on in the jail now."
The danger, Holt stressed, lies more in the dispersement of gang members throughout the jail's population than in their raw numbers. Correction officers have criticized the jail's administration for haphazardly putting too many gang members in any given tier.
"If you have two or three Latin Kings in a tier, they're not that bad," Holt said. "If you have it where 17 out of 20 people in a tier are Latin Kings, then they have strength in numbers, and they're much more brazen and bold."
The result is more fights between inmates and violence toward correction officers, who are sometimes turned on when they attempt to break up a brawl. "They're all thrown together on general tiers and what do you think is going to happen?" said Sullivan, who estimates he's been assaulted by inmates five or six times in the past five years. "We're on the verge of losing floors right now."
According to Adams, there were twice as many assaults against correction officers in January 2003 as there were in the same month last year.
"I had an inmate try and blind me with detergent -- he had it in a bottle of shampoo," Holt said. "I don't know how he had it. Luckily I had my glasses on. This guy also threatened to kill my children."
It's not the first such threat Holt has received. In fact, he even asked that his neighborhood not be identified to protect his wife and five young children.
Sheriff Reilly, who has run the Nassau County jail since 2000, admits that there is a gang presence there but believes correction officers are overstating the case. He also maintains that the jail meticulously identifies and monitors gang members.
"We had no way of analyzing the gang presence when I arrived," said Reilly, adding that in 2001 he created a Gang Intelligence Unit dedicated to sniffing them out. "They have been working very hard and I think succeeding in identifying gang presence."
He insists that gang members are not being thrown into a tier randomly. "We, of course, know where they are housed," Reilly said. "Certainly we are [aware] of where our identified gang members are."
Who's the man?
Correction officers are also concerned with their apparent inability to swiftly punish inmates who act up. Fights, verbal threats, spitting in officers' faces and excrement- and urine-throwing go on virtually unabated, they say.
Aside from being assaulted, both Sullivan and Holt have been hit with inmates' excrement, which can carry myriad diseases, including AIDS and hepatitis. What's more, they said such acts have gone largely unpunished. Without fear of reprisal, inmates are losing respect for the correction officers.
"If you and I get into a fight outside a bar and the police pull up, we're going to jail," Holt said. "Is there any particular reason inside a penal institution why two inmates don't get arrested for that?"
Reilly insists, though, that inmates who act up are being arrested. "What I found when I got here was inmates who assaulted officers were not being arrested," Reilly said. "Through the extensive assistance of the District Attorney's Office and the Nassau County Police Department, we have been able to put into place a process to ensure that inmates who assault officers are arrested for their crime."
But that arrest process has come under fire, too. According to Reilly, in order for an inmate to be arrested, a form must be filled out and then processed by the Third Precinct as well as the District Attorney's Office.
County Legis. Dennis Dunne (R-Levittown), who represents the part of East Meadow where the jail is located, is a strong proponent of giving the correction officers arresting power, as many have in other correctional facilities, to expedite the process. "I'm not happy with the administration, the way they're handling this," Dunne said. "There are things that are going on in that jail that aren't good, and [the correction officers] don't have the right to arrest."
Correction officers would probably settle for the creation of a disciplinary housing unit, where the more disruptive inmates can be separated from the general population. "About five years ago we had a behavioral modification unit put in," Sullivan recalled. "We called it a high-risk tier, a separate unit where we could put the inmates who were prone to be disruptive. It worked like a charm."
That unit has since been closed down, and the jail has lacked an area to move troublesome inmates and stop them from riling up the rest. "An inmate like that is a cancer on that tier, he'll crank everybody up," Sullivan said.
"The unit that the officers are speaking of was in a building that is no longer used," since about 1999, said Reilly. "It's fallen into disrepair."
The sheriff agrees that there is a need for a disciplinary housing unit in the jail, and says he has been working on creating one. "We continue to move in concert with the State Commission of Corrections," Reilly said. "There is an individual from there that will be coming down this week to inspect the area that's been identified to become the unit."
Despite a number of proposals, Reilly has yet to receive the necessary approval from the State Commission of Corrections.
"Since March there have been several versions of policy and procedure regarding the segregation unit that have been exchanged, and we've sent them back to them as unsatisfactory and unworkable," said Scott Steinhardt, spokesman for the commission. "They have continued to display an inability to develop proper policy and procedures to operate a segregation unit."
Making a point
Mounting concern from correction officers culminated in an incident on Jan. 29 in which about 70 of them delayed reporting to their posts in the morning. County Executive Thomas Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) characterized the delay as a work stoppage, which, under the Taylor Law, is illegal for public employees.
"Just saying, 'We're not showing up for work on time today' is illegal, and we will not tolerate it in this administration," Suozzi said at a press conference. "These officers are sworn to enforce the law, not break it."
Suozzi said he planned to bring the issue before the Public Employment Relations Board to determine if the Taylor Law was broken and punish the officers involved if it was.
Adams maintains that the delay was not a work stoppage and that the officers got to work on time. They simply waited 45 minutes to relieve the officers who worked the night shift to discuss security concerns, he said.
Indeed, their security concerns are considerable. "We're not looking for more money, it's about officer safety," Holt said. "There are a lot of guys saying, 'If I could get a job with the same money, I'd leave here today.'"
But it's not that simple, Sullivan said. "It's not easy to just go to another jail," he said. "Why would I go to Suffolk or Westchester county and start over when I'm two thirds of the way here?"
Adams said that he plans to solicit the help of state and county officials to improve jail conditions. "I might speak to the Legislature to apprise them of the situation," he said.
